IFV 



THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 



THE 

INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

ON ENGLISH POETRY 



BY 



RAYMOND DEXTER HAVENS 

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER 




CAMBRIDGE 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

LONDON: HUMPHREY Mn^FORD 

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1922 



-< 



COPYRIGHT, 1922 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 



SEP "^ >^^^ 






TO 

CECILIA BEAUX 

WHOSE PAINTINGS ARE BUT ONE ASPECT 

OF HER DEVOTION TO THE TRUE 

AND THE BEAUTIFUL 



Homage to him 
His debtor band^ innumerable as waves 
Running all golden from an eastern sun, 
Joyfully render, in deep reverence 
Subscribe, and as they speak their Milton's name, 
Rays of his glory on their foreheads bear. 

GEORGE MEREDITH. 



/ 



/r.r 



PREFACE 

FIFTEEN years ago last spring Mr. C. N. Greenough, now dean 
of Harvard College, suggested to me Milton's influence in the 
eighteenth century as one of a number of desirable subjects for a 
doctor's thesis. Since that time, except for my first three years of 
teaching and a year and a half during the war, this study has taken 
all the hours not devoted to professional duties, all my summers, 
and all of three entire years. I am embarrassingly conscious that this 
expenditure of time is quite disproportionate to the results; yet, as 
Michael Wodhull (who had planned to complete his translation of 
Euripides in "about one year") wrote, a century since, "notwith- 
standing about eight years have elapsed, during which I cannot 
charge myself with any gross degree of remissness or inattention, I 
feel much more inclined to express my fears, lest I should have been 
too hasty in the publication, than to apologise for my tardiness." 

The danger in a study of this kind is that the writer shall be as one 
who walks in a mist, seeing only what is immediately before him. 
More time for continuous reading, not alone in the poetry but in the 
philosophy and criticism of the period, together with more attention 
I -) its history, would, I realize, have made the work broader, richer, 
1 .eatier, and in every way more significant. For the title indicates 
only the principal subject with which the book is concerned, since I 
have endeavored not alone to study Milton's influence (touching also 
on that of his more important followers), but to make some historical 
and critical evaluation of the works he influenced, to trace the course 
of blank-verse translations and the development of the principal 
types of unrimed poetry,— such as the descriptive, the epic, and the 
technical treatise, — to reach a better understanding of the eight- 
eenth-century lyric awakening, to follow the history of non-dramatic 
blank verse from its beginnings to the boyhood of Tennyson, and of 
the sonnet from the restoration of the Stuarts to the accession of 
Victoria. 

My method has been to examine, at least cursorily, all the avail- 
able English poetry written between 1660 and 1837 regardless of its 
esthetic value or historical importance, and to reexamine with more 
care all that seemed to have any real significance for my pur- 
poses. Notwithstanding a constant effort to reduce the bulk of the 



X PREFACE 

footnotes, appendices, and bibliographies, such machinery presents 
an array almost as appalling to read as it was time-consuming to 
prepare. Yet in a field where assumptions and unsupported asser- 
tions have been rife and scholarship is still young, there is need of 
such dry bones of literary history. 

I am grateful to the authorities and attendants of the Harvard 
Library for the courteous and generous treatment they have given 
me throughout many years, for their willingness to buy books I sug- 
gested, and for their very Kberal purchases of other books through 
which in a relatively few years they have built up a notable collection 
of eighteenth-century Literature. I owe much to my former teachers 
at Harvard, not only for information but for training and inspiration. 
To Mr. Greenough, who started me on this study, to Mr. Neilson 
(now president of Smith College), who read my thesis, chapter by 
chapter, as it was written and made many helpful suggestions, and to 
Mr. Kittredge, who gave me letters to various English libraries, 
ordered books I needed, and otherwise aided me, I am especially 
indebted. None of these gentlemen, however, are in any way re- 
sponsible for the pages that follow ; for, from the time my thesis was 
accepted until the rewritten and greatly enlarged work was sub- 
mitted to the syndics of the Harvard University Press, the only 
person who has seen any of the manuscript (except Mr. and Mrs. 
E. H. Hall, who were good enough to read Part I) is my friend and 
assistant. Miss Addie F. Rowe. Since 191 6 Miss Rowe has devoted 
all her time to the book, bringing to it rare patience and thorough- 
ness, together with experience in preparing manuscripts for publi- 
cation. She has pointed out and helped to remove infelicities of 
expression, has called my attention to books that I had not seen as 
well as to Miltonic phrases that I had not noticed, and in one way 
or another has improved every page. 

Milton's poetry is cited from W. A. Wright's edition, Cambridge, 
1903. I shall be glad to receive corrections or additions from any 
who will be kind enough to send them. 

R. D. H. 

Rochester, New York. 



CONTENTS 



PART I 

THE ATTITUDE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
TOWARDS MILTON 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Milton's Fame in the Eighteenth Century 3 

II. Blank Verse and Rime 44' 

III. Prosody and Diction 54, i 



PART II 

THE INFLUENCE OF PARADISE LOST 

IV. The Characteristics or Paradise Lost and their 

Relation to Eighteenth-century Blank Verse ... 75 , - 

V. The Influence before Thomson, 1667-1726 89 

VI. Thomson 123 

VII. Young 149 

VIII. CowpER 161,,. 

IX. Wordsworth 177 

X. Keats 201 

XL The Influence outside of Blank Verse: Ossian, 

Blake, Shelley, Byron 215 

THE INFLUENCE OF PARADISE LOST AS SHOWN IN THE 
MORE IMPORTANT TYPES OF BLANK-VERSE POETRY 

XII. Meditative and Descriptive Poetry 236 

XIII. Epic and Burlesque Poetry 276 

The Epic 276 

The Burlesque 3^5 

XIV. Translations of the Classlcs 323 

XV. Technical Treatises in Verse 359 

XVI, Philosophical and Religious Poetry 382 

Philosophical 382 

Religious 402 



xii CONTENTS 

PART III 

THE SHORTER POEMS 

XVII. Late Vogue of the Shorter Poems 419 

XVIII. The Influence of L'Allegro and II Penseroso . . . 439 
XIX. Milton and the Sonnet, with a History of the Sonnet 

IN THE Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries . 478 

XX. The Influence of the Remaining Poems 549 

Lycidas 549 

CoMus and Samson Agonistes 555 

The Translation from Horace . . . . ; 560 

The Nativity 565 

APPENDICES 

A. Parallel Passages, showing Expressions probably Bor- 
rowed from Milton 573 

Pope 573 

Thomson 583 

Young 590 

Thomas Warton 595 

Cowper 603 

Wordsworth 607 

Keats 620 

B. Poems in Non-Miltonic Blank Verse, 1667-1750 . . . 625 

C. Loco-descriptive Poems not known to be Miltonic . . 627 

a. Hill-poems 627 

b. Other Poems 628 

D. Rimed Technical Treatises 632 

BIBLIOGRAPHIES 

I. Poems Influenced by Paradise Lost 637 

II. Poems Influenced by L'Allegro and II Penseroso . . 669 

III. Poems Influenced by the Remaining Works of Milton 680 

A. Lycidas 680 

B. COMUS 681 

C. The Translation from Horace 682 

D. The Nativity 684 

IV. Eighteenth-century Sonnets 685 

INDEX 699 



PART I 

THE ATTITUDE OF THE EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURY TOWARDS MILTON 



CHAPTER I 

MILTON'S FAME IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

A FEW years ago one of America's most distinguished citizens wrote, 
" As to the Paradise Lost . . . I have never read it as a whole, and I 
doubt whether I have known any other person who has ever done 
so." These words carry weight, for their author was a gentleman of 
fine culture and of unusually wide acquaintance among cultivated 
persons both in academic and in diplomatic circles. Nor is his testi- 
mony unique. ■ A well-known orator won the smiling approval of a 
large audience some twenty-five years since, when he referred to 
Milton's epic as "a poem that every one talks about and no one 
reads." Conditions may be better in Great Britain and her colo- 
nies; yet within the last decade an English author has likened Milton 
to "the colossal image of some god in a remote and rarely visited 
shrine." ^ It is to be feared that most persons, though willing to 
concede the greatness of Paradise Lost, regard it as a long, dreary 
work which no one ever disturbs of his own free will. Of course we 
are not now concerned with the large class whose reading i^onfined 
almost exclusively to newspapers and cheap magazines, but with 
that fit audience which does turn for inspiration, comfort, and joy 
to Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats, and Tennyson. Even in this 
select company an admirer of Milton seems to be rare. 

Most of us, therefore, have no hesitation in agreeing with the 
assertion, "Milton has never been a popular poet as Shakespeare is 
popular, never perhaps even as Scott is popular, or as Byron was in 
his day and generation." ^ Nor do we question Mr. Saintsbury's 
dictum that, although the eighteenth century "did not thoroughly 
understand them, it accepted even Shakespeare and Milton. . . . 
It regarded Dryden . . . very much as we should regard Shake- 
speare and Milton rolled into one." ^ Towards the middle of that 
century, to be sure, Milton and Spenser are known to have played 
a considerable part in the "romantic revival"; but "by the Augus- 

1 W. M. Dixon, English Epic and Heroic Poetry (191 2), 201. 

"^ H. S. Pancoast, Some Paraphrasers of Milton, in Andover Review, xv. 53. 

^ Peace of the Augustans, a Survey of Eighteenth-Century Literature as a Place of Rest 
and Refreshment (1916, a work almost as stimulating and unhackneyed as its title leads 
one to expect), 91. 



4 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

tans," it is agreed, Milton *' was shunned and practically neglected."^ 
Austin Dobson, whose familiarity with the period is unrivalled, says, 
in speaking of Mrs. Delany (i 700-1 788), "During the earlier half of 
her Ufetime, Pope reigned paramount in poetry, and Milton was 
practically forgotten: during the latter half, people were beginning 
to forget Pope, and to remember Milton." ^ These views are not 
only accepted by most students, but, as they agree with what we 
know of Milton and of the age of prose, there would seem to be no 
reason for questioning them; yet, since almost any generalization 
regarding the eighteenth century needs to be closely scrutinized, it 
may be well to discover on what basis they rest.^ 

We naturally turn first of all to the editions of Milton's works, 
and, in order to speak with greater certainty on a highly-complicated 
matter, we had better confine ourselves to his principal poem. Here 
a genuine surprise awaits us, for we find that between 1705 and 1800 
Paradise Lost was pubHshed over a hundred times.^ The wonder 
grows when we look at the Faerie Queene, which, we are accustomed 
to think, had approximately the same number of readers as the epic. 
If so, they must have borrowed most of their copies, for Spenser's 
poem appeared only seven times in the same period. Shakespeare, 

^ W. L. Phelps, Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement (Boston, 1893), 87. 

* Miscellanies (2d series, 1902), no. 

^ Since the present chapter covers much the same ground as J. W. Good's Studies in 
the Milton Tradition (Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, 1915) and makes use of similar evidence, 
it seems only fair to indicate the references to Milton for which I am indebted to Mr. 
Good. I have not, however, specified any of the material used in his book which I had 
collected before the Studies appeared, — not a little of which, indeed, was in my hands 
some years before he began his researches. At the same time, the passages to which his 
name is attached do not show all my obligations to him; for many suggestions which 
it would be impossible to point out definitely, and which were often remote from the 
subject he was considering, have come to me as I have read the material that he has so 
painstakingly collected. 

* I have left the number indefinite because without a careful, personal examination 
of each edition it is impossible to say how many there are. Several in my bibliography, 
which differs considerably from that published by Mr. Good (Studies, 25-7), may be 
duplicates, while others that should be in it have probably escaped me. A number that 
Mr. Good omits I found in English and American libraries which he may not have 
consulted, and the same is presumably true of many of those in his list that are not in 
mine. But, even if we had a faultless bibliography, there would still be the question as 
to how much of it ought to be included under the term "editions" or "publications" 
of Paradise Lost. Do such categories embrace translations, prose versions, adaptations 
(oratorios, for example), issues containing only part of the poem, and Irish, Scottish, 
and American editions? Assuming that they do not, and accordingly omitting the six 
versions in prose and all other adaptations and translations even when accompanied by 
the original text, as well as all publications outside of the British Isles and all selections 
(except one of 335 pages devoted exclusively to Milton's epic), and adding thirteen 
editions from Mr. Good's list that are not in mine, I have 105 separate publications of 
Paradise Lost in the eighteenth century. 



MILTON'S FAME 5 

to be sure, is in a different category : every family must possess his 
works even if no one reads them. But what is our astonishment to 
learn that the eighteenth century was satisfied with fifty editions of 
his plays! It is true that a number of his dramas appeared sepa- 
rately; but the most popular of these, Macbeth, was pubhshed by 
itself only thirteen times, whereas Comus in its original form saw 
three printings and as adapted for the stage over thirty.^ Further- 
more, Paradise Lost had the unique honor of being the first poem to 
be sold by subscription, the first Enghsh poem to appear in a critical 
edition, the first to have a variorum edition, and the first to be made 
the subject of a detailed critical study.^ Is it any wonder that when 
Jacob Tonson, a leading printer of the day, was asked ''what poem 
he ever got the most by," he immediately named Paradise Lost? ^ 

Obviously, Milton scholarship was active in the eighteenth cen- 
tury; indeed, it was much more active, and aside from Masson's 
monumental Life more fruitful, than it has been since. To prove 
this, or to give any adequate conception of the extent of the critical 
attention devoted to Milton, would, however, require not a chapter 
but a volume. Editions of the poet and essays on his works contain 
but a fraction of the writings on the subject. Periodicals, histories, 
biographies, letters, novels, poems, rehgious tracts, and political 
pamphlets, as well as discussions of Homer, Longinus, the French 
Revolution, rhetoric, education, marriage, liberty, and even garden- 
ing, all lead to Milton. Francis Blackburne's Memoirs of Thomas 
Hollis and Joseph Warton's Essay on Pope are largely devoted to the 
"mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies," and for the allusions to 
him in such writers as John Dennis a proper reference would be, 
"See works passim." Some idea of the unusual attention he was at- 
tracting may be gained from an examination of a single periodical 

^ These figures regarding the number of editions of Spenser and Shakespeare are 
taken from the printed catalogue of the British Museum, which presumably does not 
list all the issues published. It may be added that Samson Agonisles, besides being 
translated into Greek, was foUr times adapted for the stage or for music, and that the 
version made for Handel's oratorio was published at least nine times before 1800. 

^ Tonson's sumptuous folio of 1688 was the second hook to be published in England 
by subscription, the first was Walton's Polyglot Bible (see Masson's edition of Milton's 
poems, 1874, i. 19 n.). Patrick Hume's notes on Paradise Lost, which accompanied the 
1695 edition, fill 321 closely printed folio pages, and antedate by fourteen years the first 
critical edition of Shakespeare (Rowe's), which was in comparison a very simple affair. 
Newton's first variorum edition of the epic appeared in 1749, a second by Marchant 
was issued in 1751, apparently a third (which I have not seen) by J. H. Rice in 1791, 
and a fourth by Todd in 1801. There may have been others in 1765 and 1766, — I know 
only the dubious titles. Addison's Speclalor papers were published in 1712. Further- 
more, Warton's edition of Milton's minor poems (1785) is one of the earliest of the 
separately-published critical editions of short English pieces. 

^ Spence's Anecdotes (ed. Singer, 1820), 344. 



6 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

like the Gentleman's Magazine. This, the leading journal of the day, 
printed eight pieces deaUng with him in both the second and the 
eighth year of its existence (1732 and 1 738), while in the seventeenth 
(1747) it gave space to twenty and in the twentieth (1750) to eleven.* 
These figures are unusual, to be sure ; but from five to seven papers 
on this supposedly neglected poet frequently appeared in a single 
year, and the average number was probably greater than any maga- 
zine devoted to him on the tercentenary of his birth. 

Beyond question, the attitude of the eighteenth century was quite 
unlike our own, so unlike that it is hardly possible for us to con- 
ceive it. Milton's shrine, instead of being, as it is now, "remote and 
rarely visited," was, like that of Thomas a Becket or of St. James of 
Compostella in earlier times, closely associated with the life and 
thought of the day and thronged with persons of all classes, each 
bearing his gift. In the twentieth century there are few even of 
Milton's admirers whose feeHng for the poet could be characterized 
as enthusiasm ; yet this seems to be the fittest word to describe the 
attitude of Pope's friend Bishop Atterbury, of Cowper, of Thomas 
Mollis, of the Wartons, and of many of their contemporaries. For 
some of them, indeed, the term is not strong enough. Leonard 
Welsted writes, for example, "I have a fondness" for Waller, but 
"I pay adoration" to Milton.^ Warburton, who himself thought 
the English epic superior to those of Greece and Rome, must have 
been sneering at more extreme views when he spoke of "all the silly 
adorers of Milton, who deserve to be laughed at." ^ This recalls the 
" Gentleman of Oxford" who feared to criticize one whose popularity 
was so "immeasurably great, and his Reverence Uttle less than 
divine." ■* "The divine Milton" is Thomas Hollis's favorite phrase 

* These forty-seven pieces include articles bearing on the Lauder controversy, with 
long extracts from Masenius and from Grotius (of whose Adamus Exul ten translations 
were received in one month, "besides what may come to-morrow") ; a prose "apotheo- 
sis" of Milton (counted as three pieces, since its parts appeared in three issues); an 
inscription under Milton's bust; half a dozen poems, including a prologue for Comus; 
and three Latin translations from Paradise Lost (counted as one, since in one issue of 
the magazine). 

" "Remarks on Longinus," 1712, Works (ed. J. Nichols, 1787), 422. Compare an 

anonymous tribute to Milton {Verses to the Author, "by a Divine," iii Stephen Duck's 

Poems, 1738, p. 131), • • •. ui « 

His Lays, mimitably tine, 

With Ecstasy each Passion move. 

' Letter to Richard Hurd, Dec. 23, 1749, in J. Nichols's Illustrations of Literary 

History (1817), ii. 177 n. 

* A Neiv Version of the P. L. (Oxford, 1756), preface. Earlier in the preface we are 
told that Milton is "the greatest Genius among our English Poets," and that "his 
Poem ... is generally allowed to exceed all others for Sublimity of Thought and 
Grandeur of Expression." 



MILTON'S FAME 7 

for the man whom he also called "my hero, and the guide of my 
paths." ^ "Idolators" is the expression used by George Hardinge, 
who adds, "Few, if any, can out-idolize me." ^ Among these "idol- 
ators" was Jonathan Richardson the painter, who devoted the "Be- 
loved Retir'd Hours" of many years to the loving study and service 
of "One to Whom," he declared, "I am Infinitely Oblig'd." "I, 
even I," Richardson writes in his pleasant, garrulous way, "while a 
Youth . . . happening to find the First Quarto [of what he else- 
where terms "the Best Poem in the World"] . . . was Dazzled 
with it, and from that Hour all the rest {Shakespear excepted) 
Faded in my Estimation, or Vanish'd." ^ This recalls the experience 
of another idolater, Cowper, who " at so ripe an age As twice seven 
years " "danced for joy" over his discovery of Paradise Lost, a work 
which he too thought " the finest poem in the world " and the author 
of which he referred to as "this greatest of men, your idol and 
mine." " 

This exaggerated estimate was by no means so rare in the "age of 
reason" as might be expected. It is to be encountered as early as 
1704, when the epic was characterized by a leading critic as "the 
greatest Poem that ever was written by Man,"^ and as late as 1796, 
when it was described as "the noblest poem, perhaps, that ever the 
wit of man produced." ^ Indeed, John Wesley mentions this as a 
common opinion. "Of all the Poems which have hitherto appeared 
in the World, in whatever Age or Nation," he writes, carefully 
weighing his words, "the Preference has generally been given, by 
impartial Judges, to Milton's Paradise Lost." ' Richard Bentley, 
who had httle appreciation of the poem, unintentionally confirms 
this remark when he tries to explain how the work "could pass upon 

1 Francis Blackburne, Memoirs of Hollis (1780), 74, 93, 112, and cf. 71, 620. 

^ Miscellaneous Works (ed. J. Nichols, 1818), iii. 120. His idolatry was shown in 
his conduct; for in his first call upon the Swan of Lichfield he "abruptly, and d propos 
de rien, asked her had she ever heard Milton read? The Paradise Lost was produced, and 
opened at a venture; the judge jumped upon the table, and read some pages, not to her 
astonishment only, but to her profound admiration. ... As abruptly, her visitant 
closed the volume, descended from the table, made his bow, and without a word disap- 
peared. . . . The next morning a pacquet was transmitted to Miss Seward, enclosing 
an elaborate critique on the English Homer" (Notes and Queries, 3d series, i. 26). 

^ Explanatory Notes on P. L. (1734), pp. clxxix-clxxxi, cxviii-cxix. 

* For full quotations and references, see pp. 161-2 below. 

^ John Dennis, Grounds of Criticism in Poetry ( 1 704) ,54. In the preface to the prose 
version of Paradise Lost (1745) it is characterized as "the finest Poem that ever was 
wrote." 

« Life of Milton, prefixed to Samson Agonistes (Bell's British Theatre, 1797, vol. 
xxxiv), p. viii. 

^ Extract from P. L. (1791), 3. James Paterson, in his Complete Commentary on 
P. L. (1744, p. i), starts with the assumption that it is "the prime Poem in the World." 



8 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

the whole Nation for a perfect, absolute, faultless Composition: The 
best Pens in the Kingdom contending in its Praises, as eclipsing all 
modern Essays whatever; and rivahng, if not excelling, both 
Homer and Virgil." ^ Even Dr. Johnson, who dishked Milton's 
character, opposed blank verse, and ridiculed Lycidas and the 
sonnets, commended the epic as "a poem which, considered with 
respect to design, may claim the first place, and with respect to per- 
formance the second, among the productions of the human mind." ^ 
Goldsmith, too, though he shared many of Johnson's prejudices, had 
a hand in the preparation of a book which exhausts the vocabulary 
in praise of the English writer who "seems to have rivalled and ex- 
celled all other Epic poets." Paradise Lost, according to this 
treatise, is "wonderfully described, painted with such bold and 
noble strokes, and deHvered in such nervous language ... so orig- 
inal and noble in its plan and contrivance, and wrought up with such 
wonderful art," that "there is a nobleness and sublimity in the 
whole . . . which transcends, perhaps, that of any other poem." ^ 
Still more emphatically Philip Neve declared the "genius " of Milton 
to be "above example, or comparison. . . . His subject, and his 
conduct of it, exalt him to a supreme rank . . . with which all other 
poets compare but as a second class." ^ 

Sometimes no specific work is mentioned by an admirer, but Mil- 
ton is invoked as the "supreme of Verse," ^ or characterized as "an 
Author of that Excellence of Genius and Learning, that none of any 
Age or Nation, I think, has excel'd him," or as "perhaps the greatest 
[genius] that ever appeared among men." ^ Yet it was unquestion- 

^ Preface to his edition of Paradise Lost (1732). 

2 Lives of the Poets (ed. Birkbeck Hill, Oxford, 1905), i. 170. Cf. Johnson's preface 
to Lauder's Essay on Milton's Use of the Moderns (1750) : "Mankind . . . have endeav- 
oured to compensate the error of their first neglect [of Paradise Lost] , by lavish praises 
and boundless veneration. There seems to have arisen a contest, among men of genius 
and literature, who should most advance its honour, or best distinguish its beauties." 

^ JohnNewbery's^r/o/Poe/rj on a A'ewP/aw (1762), ii. 318,326. Similarly, Daniel 
Neal, in his History of the Puritans (1738, iv. 466-7), speaks of Milton's "incomparable 
Poem ... in which he manifested such a wonderful Sublimeness of Thought, as, per- 
haps, was never exceeded in any Age or Nation in the World" (Good, pp. 122-3). 

* Cursory Remarks on English Poets (1789), 141. Later (p. 144) Neve calls Paradise 
Lost "the greatest work of human genius." 

^ Sneyd Davies, Rhapsody to Milton (w. 1740), in John Whaley's Collection of Poems 
(1745), 182. Cf. Song by Mr. T. (w. 1767), in J. Nichols's Collection (1780), viii. 135: 
But let me with reverence kneel 
O'er the grave of the greatest in verse. 

* Charles Gildon's continuation of Langbaine's English Dramatick Poets (1699), 100; 
Richard Baron's preface to Milton's Eikonoklastes (1756), p. iv. Some of the other 
references to Milton in Gildon's works contain extravagant praise : see his Miscellaneous 
Letters and Essays (1694), 41-4 ("To Mr. T. S., in Vindication of Mr. Milton's Paradise 



MILTON'S FAME 9 

ably Paradise Lost that such writers had chiefly in mind; for the 
modern heresy of exalting the shorter poems at the expense of the 
longer was scarcely known in an age which, whatever its deficiencies, 
at least appreciated the solid things of hterature. The contrary 
opinion is widely held, to be sure, owing to the attention given to the 
influence of the 1645 volume upon Gray, Collins, and their contem- 
poraries; but it is quite unwarranted. Even lyric poets, who natu- 
rally made more use of the octosyllabics, sonnets, and other short 
pieces, were as whole-hearted in their admiration of the epic as they 
were unblushing in adopting its phraseology and diction. During 
the first forty years of the century, when praise was being lavished 
upon Paradise Lost, the shorter pieces were seldom mentioned, and 
at no time do they seem to have exerted an influence at all com- 
parable to that of the epic.^ Evidence of every kind and from 
a great variety of sources points to the same conclusion, that from 
the boyhood of Pope to the death of Cowper the preeminence of 
Paradise Lost among the works of its author was never seriously 
questioned.- 

But, although the shorter pieces did not receive a tithe of the 
critical consideration or of the extravagant praise that was showered 
upon the epic, they were enthusiastically admired. Burke called 

Lost"); Examen Miscellaneum (1702), pp. ii, iii, and first p. 51; Libertas Trlumphans 
(1708), 6; Complete Art of Poetry (1718), i. 108, 268-9; and Laws of Poetry (1721), 34- 
See also John Buncombe's Ode to John, Earl of Corke (1757), in his Works of Horace, 
1767, ii. 239 (Good, p. 82): 

Though foremost in the Lists of Fame 

We matchless Milton place. 

1 The total number of poems which I have found to be significantly influenced by 
the minor pieces before 1742 is only 41, while in the same period 196 were affected 

by Paradise Lost. The largest number of poems influenced in any decade by any of the , 
shorter pieces was 75 (those affected by the octosyllabics between 1780 and 1790). In '/ 
this same period 100 poems showed the influence of the epic. 

2 This was pointed out in my Scve^iteenth Century Notices of Milton (Englische Stii- 
dien, xl. 184-5) > and has been proved in great detail by Mr. Good, who, indeed, goes too 
far in the opposite direction. The only exceptions I remember among the hundreds of 
references to the poems that have come to my attention are in a letter from Lord Mon- 
boddo to Sir George Baker, Oct. 2, 1782, and in the Bee for 1793 (xvi. 276), where 
Comiis is preferred to Paradise Lost; in the letters of Miss Seward (see p. 501 below), 
where the best of Milton's sonnets are thought equal to anything he wrote; and in 
Goldsmith's Beauties of English Poesy (1767, i. 39), where we are told that "a very 
judicious critic" thought the octosyllabics gave "an higher idea of Milton's stile in 
poetry" than the epic did. It is interesting to know that Joseph Warton, a great 
admirer and imitator of the minor poems, arranged Milton's works in the order of their 
poetic excellence thus, Paradise Lost, Comus, Samson, Lycidas, Allegro, Penseroso (T. 
Warton's edition of the minor poems, 1785, p. 34); and that Ann Yearsley, the Bristol 
milkwoman, was "well acquainted" with the epic but ignorant of Milton's having 
written anything else {Mo. Rev., Ixxiii. 218). 



lO THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Penseroso "the finest poem in the EngUsh language"; ^ Cowper as a 
boy was "so charmed " with it and its companion piece that he "was 
never weary of them"; ^ and Hugh Blair thought them "of all the 
English Poems in the Descriptive Style, the richest and most re- 
markable." ^ It was these pieces that Gray had particularly in mind 
when he mentioned their author as " the best example of an exquisite 
ear" that he could produce/ " If he had written nothing else," said 
another, apropos of the octosyllabics, he "has displayed such exten- 
sive powers of imagination, as would have given him a place 
among the foremost of the sons of Phoebus."^ A similar opinion 
had been expressed more than twenty years earlier: "His Juvenile 
Poems . . . are suflScient to have set him among the most Celebrated 
of the Poets, even of the Ancients themselves; his Mask and Lycidas 
are perhaps Superior to all in their Several Kinds . . . the Allegro 
and Penseroso are Exquisite Pictures."^ Nathan Drake went even 
farther: ^'L' Allegro ed II Penseroso are the most exquisite and accu- 
rately descriptive poems in his own, or any other, language, and will 
probably for ever remain unrivalled." ^ John Aikin said much the 
same, ranking the octosyllabics as "perhaps the most captivating 
pieces of the descriptive kind that all poetry affords";^ while 
Christopher Smart, in speaking of Dryden's and Pope's odes for St. 
Cecilia's day, threw all "perhaps's" to the winds and affirmed, 
"Neither is there to be found two more finished pieces of Lyric 
Poetry in our Language, L 'allegro and II penseroso of Milton ex- 
cepted, which are the finest in any." ^ Miss Seward, who " lisped " 
these companion poems "when only in her third year," and who 
often delighted herself by repeating Lycidas from memory, was " al- 
most" of George Hardinge's opinion, that "the best of Milton's 
sonnets [are] equal to any thing he has written." ^^ As she held 
that he had but one superior in the world, this is high praise for the 
sonnets. 

1 Letter to Matthew Smith, c. 1750, in Prior's Burke (5th ed., 1854), 35. 

2 Letter to William Unwin, Jan. 17, 1782. 

3 Lectures on Rhetoric (1783), ii. 375. 

* Observations on English Metre (w. 1760-61), in Works, ed. Mitford, 1858, v. 233. 

^ "T. VJ.," in Old Maid, no. 12 (Jan. 31, 1756): Drake's G/eawer (181 1), ii. 381. 

^ Richardson, Explanatory Notes (1734) , pp. xv-xvi. The similar praise to be found 
in Toland's and Fenton's biographies of Milton, published in 1698 and 1725 respec- 
tively, is given on p. 424 below. 

^ Literary Hours (3d ed., 1804), ii. 89. 

^ Letters on English Poetry (2d ed., 1807), 124. 

^ Preface to his Ode for Musick on St. Cecilia's Day (c. 1755), reprinted in Poems 
(Reading, 1 791), i. 39. 

1" See E. V. Lucas, A Swan and her Friends (1907), 21; Miss Seward's Letters (Edin., 
1811), i. 66; and p. 501 below. 



MILTON'S FAME II 

But long before Miss Seward and her friends essayed the lyre, in 
fact while Dryden was still living, the juvenile poems had been de- 
clared ''incomparable"; before 1728 Comus was called "the best 
[masque] ever written ... in the Praise of which no Words can be 
too many"; as early as 1729 there were some who felt for Lycidas 
"the same Veneration, and Partiahty, which is paid to the most 
accompHsh'd Works of Antiquity," and in 1 756 some who held it " one 
of the most poetical and moving elegies that ever was wrote." ^ It 
will be clear later, when we see the great number of poems modelled 
upon the shorter pieces and the frequency with which phrases were 
taken from them, that these utterances by no means exaggerate the 
feehngs of a large part of the public. Of course there were not a few 
who, like Johnson, thought Lycidas and the sonnets absurd and were 
indifferent to the remaining minor poems; but, on the other hand, 
the commendations that have been quoted fail to give any adequate 
conception of the widespread, enthusiastic admiration which the 
poems aroused. 

Regarding Paradise Lost we have seen that a remarkable unanim- 
ity of opinion prevailed. There must have been those who did not 
care for it, but they either Kke Chesterfield kept discreetly silent,^ or 
else like Bentley made themselves ridiculous in the eyes of their fel- 
lows. It is astounding that scarcely one of the innumerable eight- 
eenth-century allusions to the poem speaks of it with the in- 
difference, dislike, or flippancy which are almost the rule to-day. 
Nor can it be urged that this praise is a perfunctory acceptance of a 
conventional opinion, for it is usually more enthusiastic and spon- 
taneous than it is judicial. Still less is there warrant for believing 
that these admirers were willing to pay the epic any tribute save 
that of reading it; for their familiarity with it — with even the later 
books — and the frequency with which they quote from it entirely 
disprove any such charge.^ " Who has wo/ read . . . Paradise lost, 
and Paradise Regained?" exclaimed a reviewer in 1796," a remark 

1 For references and other quotations, see pp. 423) 422, 426 n. i, 427, below. 
^ See below, p. 24. 

2 Addison, for example, writes, "I have drawn more quotations out of him [Milton] 
than from any other" {Spectator, no. 262); and Lord Monboddo says, "I • • • shall 
. . . quote him oftener than any other English writer, because I consider him as the 
best standard for style, and all the ornaments of speech, that we have" {Origin and 
Progress oj Language, 2d ed., 1786, iii. 68 n.). John Constable, in his Reflections upon 
Accuracy of Style (1731, pp. 14-16), quotes from Paradise Lost four times in three suc- 
cessive pages; Daniel Webb, in Observations on Poetry and Music (1769, pp. 14-18), 
quotes from it six times on five successive pages; and Thomas Sheridan draws almost 
all the illustrations for his Lectures on the Art of Reading (1775) from the same work. 
Instances of the kind might be multipUed indefinitely. 

* Mo. Rev., enl. ed., xxi. 226. 



12 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

that, in contrast to the one with which our chapter opens, mirrors 
the difference between the twentieth- and the eighteenth-century 
attitude towards Milton. 

Not, of course, that every one thought his epic " the greatest poem 
in the world." Some modestly claimed for it only a preeminence 
among English works. Gilbert Burnet, for example, who was en- 
tirely out of sympathy with Milton's pohtical activities, qualified 
his statement that Paradise Lost "was esteemed the beautifulest and 
perfectest poem that ever was writ" by adding, "at least in our lan- 
guage." ^ And such seems to have been the general opinion. The 
Spectator papers, it will be remembered, make no attempt to prove 
Milton's primacy among British bards; they assume it at the outset 
in the words, "As the first place among our English poets is due to 
Milton." ^ So, also, does the Lay-Monastery, when it speaks casu- 
ally of " our great Milton, whose Poem, which is justly now acknowl- 
edg'd to be the most admirable Production of British Genius." ^ 
Expressions to the same purport, which are to be met with con- 
stantly throughout the century and seem to have been rarely ques- 
tioned,^ are the more important because it is generally thought to-day 
that Pope and Dryden were at this time regarded as the greatest 
Enghsh poets. The Edinburgh Review was nearer the truth when it 
declared in 1808, "That he [Pope] is not of the class of Milton and 
Shakespeare is indisputable ; and, notwithstanding the two volumes, 

^ History 0} my Own Time (ed. O. Airy, Oxford, 1897), i. 284. This part of the 
History was written about 1700 {ib. pp. xxvii, xxxi n.). In Jure Divino (1706, book 
vii, p. 14 n.) Defoe praised the ' Masterly Genius ' displayed in Paradise Lost, and 
wrote, " Milton'' s Pandemonium, is allow'd to be the deepest laid Thought, most 
capacious and extensive that ever appear'd in print." Defoe may have come to 
know Paradise Lost at the dissenting academy he attended four or five years. 

2 No. 262. 

' No. xxxii, Jan. 27, 1713. Observe that the writer speaks as if Milton had written 
but one poem. So, too, does William Sewell, in the first version of his Life of Philips 
(1712), p. 3. 

^ Cf. Henry Pemberton's Observations on Poetry (1738, p. 80), where Milton is 
termed "our greatest poet"; the Muse's Complaint (by "C," in Scots Mag., 1742, iv. 
166), which speaks of him as "chief of modern bards"; Charles Graham's Etdogium 
(Universal Mag., 1785, Ixxvii. 98), which declares, "No poet since has equal'd him in 
song"; the "List of Dramatic Poets" appended to Thomas Whincop's Scanderbeg 
(1747), where Paradise Lost is called "the finest Piece in the English Language" (noted 
by Good, pp. 127-8); Catharine Macaulay's Modest Plea for Copy Right (i774, P- 23), 
where it is described as "a Poem, whose merit is of such magnitude, that it is impossible 
for a genius inferior to his own to do it justice" (Good, pp. 255-6) ; and the preface to 
Samuel Woodford's Paraphrase upon the Canticles (1679), where Dryden's praise, "one 
of the greatest . . . Poems . . . this Age . . . has produced," is repeated, and Wood- 
ford adds that if the work had been rimed "it had been so absolute a piece, that in 
spight of whatever the World Heathen, or Christian hitherto has seen, it must have 
remain'd as the standard to all succeeding Poets." 



MILTON'S FAME 1 3 

in which Dr. Warton thought it necessary to prove this truism, we 
doubt whether any critic, even during the flattery of his own age, 
ever thought of placing him so high." ^ 

What, then, did the Augustans, 'during the flattery of their age,' 
think as to the relative merits of Waller,- Dryden, Pope, Shake- 
speare, and Milton? In view of the complacency of the neo-classi- 
cists, and of the apparent narrowness of esthetic sympathy shown in 
their remarks about the roughness of English verse before "Mr. 
Waller refined our numbers," this would seem to be an easy question 
to answer. Surely the masters of the couplet had httle admiration 

^ 2d ed., xi. 409. Cf. John Duncombe's ode to the Earl of Corke (see above, p. 8, 
n. 6), where "matchless Milton" is "foremost in the Lists of Fame," though Pope will 
long "the Muse's Annals grace." "We still prefer the extravagant beauties of Shake- 
speare and Milton to the cold and well-disciplined merit of Addison and . . . Pope," 
remarked Horace Walpole (letter to Elie de Beaumont, March 18, 1765). Even John- 
son thought that in the proposed erection of monuments in St. Paul's cathedral Milton's 
"should have the precedence" over Pope's: "There is more thinking in him and in 
Butler," he adds, "than in any of our poets" (Boswell's Johnson, ed. Hill, ii. 239). 
Blair, in his Lectures on Rhetoric, which were published in 1783 but written much earlier, 
grants only that "within a certain limited region, he [Pope] has been outdone by no 
Poet" (ii. 369); and William Belsham writes {Essays, 2d ed., 1799, ii. 506), "Though 
the warmest admirers of Pope have never exalted him to the rank of the greatest poet, 
he has often been stiled the best versifier in the English language." Belsham allows 
him to be "the most polished and correct versifier," but not the one "affording the 
highest degree of delight," since he "does not sufl&ciently conceal his art." Expressions 
like that of Lord Middlesex in his poem to Pope (Chalmers's English Poets, xii. 135), 
"Like Milton, then, though in more polish'd strains," or that of A. Betson, who calls 
Pope "the most perfect Poet we ever had in this Nation" {Miscellaneous Dissertations, 
1751, p. 86, and cf. pp. 88-91), are apt to be misleading. They do not imply that Pope 
is the greatest of English poets, but that he is the most regular, the one freest from 
faults. There were few leading neo-classicists who did not realize that something more 
than this negative virtue was needed for great poetry. 

* The question "Whether Milton and Waller were not the best English Poets? and 
which the better of the two?" was answered in the Athenian Mercury for January 16, 
1691/ 2, as follows: "Milton was the fullest and loftiest, Waller the neatest and most 
correct Poet we ever had. . . . Mr. Waller, tho' a full and noble Writer, yet comes not 
up in our Judgments to that, — Mens divinior atque os — Magna Sonaturum, as Horace 
calls it, which Milton has, and wherein we think he was never equalled." When a 
similar question was raised in the British Apollo for 1708 (vol. i, no. 25), that oracle 
gave high praise to Waller, but declared, 

Milton do's to Nobler Flights aspire, 
With Virgil's Beauty and with Homer's Fire. 
In Every Image, true sublime, appears. 
And Every Thought, The Stamp of Phoebus wears. 
Sprung from the God, Divine are all his Lays, 
And claim by true Desert, the Never dying bays. 

William Coward, in his Licentia Poetica (1709), discusses "Homer, Horace, Virgil, Mil- 
ton, Waller, Cowley, Dryden, etc." as "the principal antient and modern Poets." Cf. 
Addison's Account of the Greatest English Poets (1694); A. Betson's Miscellaneous Dis- 
sertations (1751), 86-90; Defoe's remark quoted on p. 15 below; and the passage from 
Collins, p. 454 below. 



14 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

for poetry in every way so unlike their own as was the blank- verse 
Puritan epic. Yet we have seen the dangers of a priori arguments as 
to what the eighteenth century must have thought, and we remem- 
ber Addison's Spectator papers, and Dryden's famous distichs, which 
begin, 

Three poets, in three distant ages born. 

Indeed, if we are familiar with Dryden, we recall his visit to the blind 
poet and his dramatization of the epic, which he praised cordially, 
terming it "one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems 
which either this age or nation has produced." ^ His friend Nathan- 
iel Lee boldly adapted the following Hnes from the same poem 
within thirteen years of its pubHcation: 

They 've blown us up with Wild fire in the Air . . , 
Caps, Hats and Cardinals Coats, and Cowls and Hoods 
Are tost about — the sport the sport of winds — 
Indulgences, Dispences, Pardons, Bulls, see yonder! 
Preist, they fly — they're whirl'd aloft. They fly, 
They fly o'er the backside o' th' World, 
Into a Limbo large, and broad, since call'd the Paradise 
Of Fools.2 

Nor was Addison's praise limited to his celebrated critique. As 
early as 1694, in his Account of the Greatest English Poets, he devoted 
thirty lines to Milton, and later imitated two of his poems; ^ he had 
much to say about Paradise Lost in his Discourse on Ancient and 
Modern Learning, in the Tatler, and in the Spectator before and after 
the publication of his formal criticism; he commended Allegro in the 
Spectator, and agreed with a friend that of all masques Comus was 
" the best ever written." ^ What makes his extended examination of 
r the poem particularly significant in the present connection is the fact 
i that it was written by the leading neo-classic critic of the time and 
/ was addressed to the neo-classicists. Addison succeeded in proving 
to his contemporaries that Paradise Lost was a correct poem accord- 
ing to Augustan standards, that it conformed to the laws laid done 
for the epic and lost nothing by comparison with Homer and Virgil. 
Thanks to the popularity of the Spectator and to his own reputation, 
his papers had a strong influence ; they were questioned only by the 

* Works (Scott-Saintsbury ed.), v. 112. See also v. 116, 124; xi. 162, 209-10; xii. 
300-301; xiii. 17, 18-20, 30, 38, 39, 117; xiv. 143-4, 201-2 ("I dare not condemn so 
great a genius as Milton"), 214-15. 

2 Caesar Borgia (1680), near the end of the last scene; cf. P. L., iii. 487-96. Mr. 
G. L. Kittredge called my attention to this very early and striking borrowing. 
^ See pp. 104-5, 422, below. 

* See p. 422 below. 



MILTON'S FAME 1 5 

more romantic admirers of Milton, and seem to have been univer- 
sally accepted as defining the classical attitude towards England's 
greatest classic poet. 

It was not, however, to the Spectator that the other leading writers 
of the time owed their first acquaintance with Paradise Lost. Gay's 
humorous imitation of it, Wine, appeared four years before Addi- 
son's critique,^ while Defoe, Prior, Pope, and Swift each gave evi- 
dence of a knowledge of the epic before 1709. The biting satire and 
the distrust of things grand and romantic which one associates with 
Swift make him almost the last person from whom to expect praise of 
a lofty and imaginative poem in blank verse; yet he not only de- 
clared himself "an admirer of Milton," but annotated an edition of 
Paradise Lost for the use of Stella and "Mrs." Dingley, and in his 
writings showed famiharity with the entire work.^ After the Dean 
himself, the Augustan writer who would seem to have been least 
likely to appreciate the epic is Daniel Defoe. Yet so early as 1706 
Defoe had composed three poems in a verse roughly modelled upon 
that of Paradise Lost, and had asked, "Who can read Virgil, Horace, 
Ovid, Milton, Waller, or Rochester, without touching the Strings of 
his Soul, and finding a Unison of the most charming Influence 
there? "^ The company in which Milton is here placed, and the 
omission from it of Shakespeare, Dryden, and others, should not be 
overlooked. Pope's frank expressions of admiration and his less 
frank but more numerous borrowings form too large a subject for 
discussion here ; suffice it to say that he appears to have been more 
widely acquainted with the complete body of Milton's poems than 
any other man of his time.^ As for "Mat" Prior, one would hardly 
expect to find his Hght, deft pen employed on the cathedral harmo- 
nies of blank verse except in the way of parody. Yet Prior took the 
unrimed measure very seriously; he imitated it four times, and in 
his translations of two lofty hymns of Callimachus with some suc- 
cess, while in the preface to his Solomon (17 18) he attacked rime 

^ Another blank- verse burlesque, Fanscomb Barn (1713), was composed by the neo- 
classic poetess Anne, Countess of Winchilsea. It cannot be maintained that these 
parodies argue a low estimate of Milton, for both were suggested by the similar pieces 
of John Philips, one of the most ardent admirers of Paradise Lost. 

^, See indices to the Bohn editions of his prose and poetry, and that to F. E. Ball's 
edition of the Correspondence (1910-14). Besides these eleven references, there is 
Swift's part in the Grub-Sireel Jouryial, in the Memoirs of Martinns Scriblerus, and in the 
satirical commentary that accompanies The Dtinciad, all of which contain allusions to 
Milton (see pp. 113 n. 2, ii5, below). 

' Review of the State of the English Nation, vol. iii, no. 104. For the poems, see pp. 
loo-ioi below. 

* See pp. 1 1 2- 1 8, 573-83, below. 



1 6 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

and declared Paradise Lost to be ''one of the sublimest Pieces of In- 
vention that was ever yet produced." ^ 

Much the same opinion was held by the Duke of Buckingham; for 
his Essay on Poetry, which Dryden and Pope repeatedly praised, 
ends with a description of the ideal poet, who 

Must above Tasso's lofty flights prevail, 
Succeed where Spencer, and ev'n Milton fail.* 

The Earl of Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse, which the 
classicists held as a classic, contains a plea for blank verse, a tribute 
to Paradise Lost, and an imitation of it.^ Congreve mentions an 
"Immortal Song" which is ''As Spencer sweet, as Milton strong." * 
Lady Mary Montagu, with whom Pope flirted and quarrelled, at- 
tacked "the thraldom of monastic rhymes" and praised "the beau- 
ties of each living page " of Milton's poem.^ " The horrid Discord of 
jingling Rhyme" is also condemned in the celebrated Characteristics 
of the Earl of Shaftesbury, which strongly influenced Pope and many 
other writers of the time. Shaftesbury's praise of Paradise Lost is 
worth quoting. "Our most approv'd heroick Poem,^^ he wrote in 
1 710, "has neither the Softness of Language, nor the fashionable 
Turn of Wit; but merely solid Thought, strong Reasoning, noble 
Passion, and a continu'd Thred of moral Doctrine, Piety, and Virtue 
to recommend it." ^ Pamell, whose assistance on the Iliad Pope 
requited by editing his friend's posthumous works, wrote two poems 
on the model of Allegro and is said to have been " a careful student of 
Milton." ^ Curiously enough, Pope's helpers on his Odyssey, William 
Broome and Ehjah Fenton, who between them translated half the 
poem, were likewise Miltonians; for, besides using many words and 
phrases from Paradise Lost in the work they did for Pope, each made 
an unrimed version of at least one book of Homer, and in addition 

^ See also pp. 59-60, 105, below. 

^ This is the latest version; the two earlier forms show less appreciation of Milton. 
Chalmers {English Poets, x. 77-8) quotes Dryden's, Addison's, and Pope's praise of the 
Essay. 

3 See p. 89 below. 

^ A Pindarique Ode, humbly ofefd to the Queen (1706), in Works, 1710, iii. 1085 
(Good, p. 61). In his Mourning Muse of Alexis (1695, ib. 836) there is a reference to 
"Comus Feast" (Good, p. 141). 

* Court of Dulness, in Letters and Works (Bohn ed.), ii. 487-9; cf. Lines written in a 
Blank Page of P. L. {ib. 523). 

* Characteristics (3d ed., 1723), i. 276; cf. i. 217-18, and iii. 263-4. To the first of 
these references my attention was called by C. A. Moore's illuminating paper, Shaftes- 
bury and the Ethical Poets (Modern Lang. Assoc, Publications, xxxi. 264-325). 

^ Diet. Nat. Biog.: and cf. the preface to his Homer's Battle of the Frogs and Mice 
(171 7). For the poems, see p. 444 below. 



MILTON'S FAME 17 

Fenton paraphrased part of a chapter of Isaiah in blank verse, wrote 
a life of Milton, and 'amended the punctuation' of his principal 
work.^ 

Another classicist who had a hand in editing the epic was Thomas 
Tickell, the poet who was the cause of the memorable quarrel be- 
tween Addison and Pope; ^ while still another of Milton's commen- 
tators, Jonathan Richardson, whose extravagant praise of his favor- 
ite poet we have already listened to, was for twenty-two years a 
friend and correspondent of Pope. Not a little of our knowledge of 
the bard of Twickenham and his circle comes from Spence's Anec- 
dotes; yet intimacy with Pope did not prevent the author, Joseph 
Sperice, professor of poetry and later regius professor of modern his- 
tory at Oxford, from writing two pieces of blank verse that are 
clearly Miltonic.^ An earlier occupant of the chair of poetry — an 
easy-chair in those days — was Joseph Trapp, a man so classical in 
his tastes that he published his lectures in Latin and found Uttle to 
admire in poetry written since Roman days. Paradise Lost, how- 
ever, seemed to him a marked exception, for he said of it: ''Si 
. Poema Heroicum proprie dictum non scripsit Miltonus; certe 
Poema optimum scripsit; omni laude dignus, dicam? imo major: 
Homeri, & Virgilii, non servus Imitator, viam aperuit prorsus 
novam, & suam; Inventionis foecunditate, Ingenii sublimitate, 
Rerum Vocumque fulgore ac pondere, Judicii denique maturitate, 
nee Romero forsan, nee Virgilio, secundus." * This is, however, the 
least of the tributes that Trapp paid to the poet, for he translated all 
of Virgil into Miltonic blank verse and all of Milton into Virgilian 
Latin. 

One cannot read far in the literature or the history of the early 
eighteenth century without encountering Bishop Atterbury, the best 
preacher of the age and according to Addison one of its greatest 
geniuses, who narrowly escaped execution for his Jacobite activities. 

^ See Bibl. I, 1712, 1717, 1727. The 1725 Paradise Lost was supervised by Fenton, 
whose life of Milton was reprinted in many later editions. 

^ Tickell assisted on the 1720 edition. As early as 1707 he had said of John Philips, 
"Unfetter'd, in great Milton's strain he writes" {Oxford, 1707, in Works, 1854, p. 171). 

^ See Bibl. I, 1761, 1762. 

* PraelecHones Poeticce (1711), 3d ed., 1736, ii. 317-18. In the translation entitled 
Lectures on Poetry (1742, p. 351) the passage quoted is rendered thus: "If Milton did 
not write an Heroic Poem, properly so call'd, yet he certainly wrote an excellent one, 
such as deserves, or rather is above all Commendation. He is no slavish imitator of 
Homer and Virgil, he opens a Way entirely new, and entirely his own: In Fruitfulness 
of Invention, Sublimity of Genius, in the Weight and Lustre of his Thoughts and 
Words, and, lastly, in the Perfection of his Judgment, he is, perhaps, equal to either of 
them." 



1 8 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Swift, Prior, Gay, and Addison knew Atterbury well, and Pope 
proved one of his few faithful friends. " Milton remained to the end 
of his Ufe his favourite poet," writes his biographer,^ and from one of 
the bishop's own letters to Pope we may well believe it. "I protest 
to you," he wrote, "this last perusal of him [Milton] has given me 
such new degrees, I will not say of pleasure, but of admiration and 
astonishment, that I look upon the sublimity of Homer, and the 
majesty of Virgil, with somewhat less reverence than I used to do. 
I challenge you, with all your partiality, to show me in the first of 
these any thing equal to the Allegory of Sin and Death, either as to 
the greatness and justness of the invention, or the height and beauty 
of the colouring. What I looked upon as a rant of Barrow's, I now 
begin to think a serious truth, and could almost venture to set my 
hand to it." ^ Another of the Anglican clergymen whom Pope, a 
Catholic, numbered among his intimate friends was Bishop William 
Warburton, who became his literary executor. Besides writing a 
commentary on Paradise Lost (which he thought superior to the 
epics of Homer and Virgil), Warburton translated "in imitation of 
Milton's style" a Latin poem of Addison's, and lauded the minor 
poems, the Of Education, and the Areopagitica, a famous sentence 
from which he appropriated for the conclusion of one of his pam- 
phlets.' 

Perhaps John Hughes ought not to be included among the Augus- 
tans, though he contributed to the TaUer, Spectator, and Guardian 
and persuaded Addison to put Cato on the stage. He was, at any 
rate, a great admirer of Milton's chief poem and an imitator of his 
octosyllabics.^ Young, too, is thought of as romantically inclined 
because the Night Thoughts is in blank verse, but this work did not 

^ H. C. Beeching, Francis Alterbury (1909), 227. 

* Nov. 8, 1717, Pope's Works (Elwin-Courthope ed.), ix. 9-10. Barrow's "rant" is 
translated on page 21 below. Atterbury did not care for Shakespeare (Beeching's 
Atterbury, 225). In his inscription on John Philips's tomb in Westminster (see ib. 226), 
and in his preface to the Second Part of Mr. Waller's Poems (1690), he praised Milton 
and blank verse. For his plan that Pope should arrange Samson Agotiistes for presenta- 
tion, see p. 117 below. 

' For the commentary, see Works of the Learned, April, 1740, pp. 273-80, and 
Newton's preface to his edition of the epic (1749, etc.). The poem, Battle of the Cranes 
and Pigmies (1724), and the pamphlet, A Critical Enquiry into the Causes of Prodigies 
(1727), are reprinted in Samuel Parr's Tracts by Warburton and a Warburtonian (1789), 
56-62, 71-140. For his commendation of Milton, see Nichols's Illustrations, ii. 77-82, 
177 and n.; and pp. 21, 432, below. 

* See his edition of Spenser (1715), vol. i, pp. xxvii, xxx, xxxvii, xxxix, xli, Ixviii, 
Ixxxiii, etc., and his Poems (1735), i. 250,11.91, 317-18,333-4; also the praise of Milton 
quoted above (page 12) from the Lay-Monastery, of which Hughes was one of the 
editors. For his imitations, see pp. 442-3 below. 



I 



MILTON'S FAME 19 

begin to appear until its author had by his satires and his Two Epis- 
tles to Mr. Pope won recognition as a thorough-going classicist. Even 
in these heroic couplets he used many phrases from Milton, and in 
his greatest work the style and diction are derived from the epic, 
which he greatly admired and frequently quoted from. The author 
of The Seasons is another writer who is commonly ranked among the 
romanticists; yet he certainly thought highly of the poetry of his 
Twickenham neighbor, with whose circle he was intimate. Thom- 
son's appreciation and imitation of Paradise Lost will receive ex- 
tended treatment later, but it may be noted here that on a single 
page of his Winter he praises Pope and declares Milton to be equal 
to Homer. 

Another instance of how the Puritan Hon and the Augustan lamb 
(as the venomous bard would have hked to be thought) lay down 
- together occurs in the work of an intimate friend of Thomson and 
Pope, Lord Lyttelton. In one of his "Dialogues of the Dead " (1760) 
Lyttelton sets Pope and Boileau the interesting task of discussing 
Milton. ''Longinus," the French critic is made to declare, ''perhaps 
would prefer him to all other Writers : for he excells even Homer in 
the Sublime. But other Critics . . . who can endure no Absurdi- 
ties, no extravagant Fictions, would place him far below Virgil." 
To which Pope repHes, "His Genius was indeed so vast and sublime, 
that his Work seems beyond the Limits of Criticism. . . . The 
bright and excessive Blaze of poetical Fire, which shines in so many 
Parts of his Poem, will hardly permit one to see its Faults." ^ Lyt- 
telton's intimacy with Pope enabled him to know what that poet 
thought of Milton, but we cannot be sure that Boileau held the 
opinions which he is here made to express. A far greater French 
writer, however, speaks with an enthusiasm that makes the praise 
attributed to his countryman seem cold. Writing of "the noblest 
Work, which human Imagination hath ever attempted," he says 
(the book is in EngHsh) : "What Milton so boldly undertook, he per- 
form'd with a superior Strength of Judgement, and with an Imagina- 
tion productive of Beauties not dream'd of before him. . . . The 
Paradise Lost is the only Poem wherein are to be found in a perfect 
Degree that Uniformity which satisfies the Mind and that Variety 
which pleases the Imagination. . . . But he hath especially an in- 
disputable Claim to the unanimous Admiration of Mankind, when 
he descends from those high FHghts to the natural Description of 

1 Dialogues of the Dead (3d ed., 1760), 122-3. Lyttelton wrote three pieces in Mil- 
tonic blank verse and modelled his best poem upon Lycidas (see Bibl. 1, 1728, 1762, 
c. 1763, and p. 552 below). 



20 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

human Things." Voltaire is the last person from whom we should 
expect this praise, yet it is in his Essay upon Epick Poetry (1727) that 
the words occur.^ True, as he later took back most of his commenda- 
tion,^ he may never have meant it; but since he did say it, and may 
have said something of the kind often while he was in England, there 
is no escaping the significance or the influence of such a tribute from 
an eminent foreign poet and critic. Voltaire's opinion tallied so 
closely with that of the leading Englishmen of the time that he 
might well have said to them in the significant words which Lyttel- 
ton gave to Boileau, "The Taste of your Countrymen is very much 
changed since the days of Charles the Second, when Dryden was 
thought a greater Poet than Milton!" ^ 

Clearly, then, the maligned Augustans gave Milton his due. They 
did more, they joined with other writers of the century in classing 
him with the great poets of antiquity. If a critic of our time says 
that Paradise Lost is equal to the Iliad or the Aeneid, the comment 
indicates little more than enthusiasm; but if a contemporary of 
Dryden or Johnson made the same remark it meant that the English 
epic had stood the test of being measured by the highest possible 
standard, — indeed, by the only standard for great poetry. Few 
persons to-day care particularly v^^hether or not Paradise Lost is in 
accord with Longinus on the sublime; but in Pope's day they cared 
very much, so much, in fact, that they allowed scarcely any author 
to be of the first rank who did not in the main conform to the prac- 
tice of the classical writers and the laws laid down by the classical 
critics.^ 

That Milton stood this test and was ranked with, if not above, 
Homer and Virgil, no one can doubt who has read a tithe of the evi- 
dence that can be brought forward. It will be recalled that as early 
as 1688 no less eminent an authority than Dryden had said of the 
epic poets, Homer, Virgil, and Milton, 

The force of Nature could no farther go; 
To make a third, she join'd the former two. 

One doubts whether Dryden really meant this, although he is said 
to have exclaimed on first reading Paradise Lost, "This man cuts us 

^ The quotations are from Miss F. D. White's valuable reprint of the Essay (Albany, 
1915), 131-3. 

2 See ib. 68-70, 164-5. 

2 Dialogues of the Dead, 123. 

* This helps explain the indifference or the hostility of many to Shakespeare and 
Spenser, as well as the reason why long and serious poems like The Seasons and Night 
Thoughts, which were liked by almost every one, were not regarded as great. 



MILTON'S FAME 21 

all out, and the ancients too." ^ But there is no question that 
Cowper, one of the most devoted students of Homer, was sincere 
when he repeated Dryden's hues with slight changes a hundred years 
later.2 We have also seen that Atterbury wrote to Pope that he 
could almost agree with Barrow's verses, 

Romans and Grecians yield the bays, 
Yield, all ye bards of old or modern days! 

Who reads this nobler work will own 
Homer sung frogs, and Virgil gnats alone.^ 

It is to be presumed, too, that the learned Bishop Warburton had _. 
weighed his words before he wrote: "Milton . . . found Homer 
possessed of the province of morality; Virgil of politics; and 
nothing left for him, but that of religion. This he seized . . . and 
by means of the superior dignity of his subject, hath gotten to the J 
head of that Triumvirate, which took so many ages in forming."^ 
We are told that Henry Grove, one of the contributors to the Spec- 
tator, thought that "for Beauty, Variety, and Grandeur of Descrip- 
tions, as well as true Sublime in Sentiments," Milton was "greatly 
preferrable" to Homer; "and tho' he allowed Homer the Praise of a 
very great Genius, he thought the Iliad would no more bear a Com- 
parison with Paradise lost, than the Pagan Scheme of Theology 
with the Christian." ^ Another writer declared, "It is no Compli- 
ment, but a bare Piece of Justice done to Milton, when we not only 
compare him to Homer and Virgil, but even prefer him to both those 
great Poets; because his Genius evidently appears to have been 
superior to theirs, by the frequent Proofs he gives us of that Power 
which constitutes a subhme Genius and ... is more conspicuous 

1 Richardson's Explanatory Notes (1734), pp. cxix-cxx. 

^ See pp. 162-3 below, where it will be observed that Cowper on several occasions 
expressed his belief in the superiority of MUton to Homer and Virgil. 

^ The Latin original was prefixed to the second edition of Paradise Lost (1674) ; this 
translation is from the Gentleman's Magazine, xxx. 291 (cf. also below, p. 26, n. 5). 
Thomas Stratford used almost the same words — probably referring to these lines — in 
the preface to his First Book of Fontenoy (1784?, see Mo. i?CT., Ixxi. 95). Sneyd Davies 
wrote in 1740 (Rhapsody to Milton, in Whaley's Collection, 1745, p. 182), 
Such Thought, such Language, that all other Verse 
Seems trifling (not excepting Greece and Rome) 
So lofty and so sweet, beyond compare, 
Is thine. 

Thomas Green remarked in 1800 that the allegory of Sin and Death "renders the 
grandest passages in Homer and Virgil comparatively feeble and dwarfish"' (Diary of a 
Lover of Literature, Ipswich, 1810, p. 192). 

^ Divine Legation of Moses (1738), in Works, ed. R. Hurd, 1811, ii. 95. 

* Works of the Learned, June, 1741, p. 441. 



22 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

in him than in any other Poet." ^ Joseph Warton gave poetical ex- 
pression to the same opinion when he spoke of "those vales of joy" 

Where Maro and Musaeus sit 

List'ning to Milton's loftier song, 

With sacred silent wonder smit; 

While, monarch of the tuneful throng. 
Homer in rapture throws his trumpet down 
And to the Briton gives his amaranthine crown.^ 

Even the conservative Critical Review remarked that the works of 
Shakespeare and Milton were "superior to all those of antiquity," ^ 
and one of the editors of Paradise Lost declared that its author might 
"be said to be much superior to Homer and Virgil.'' ^ Richardson, 
accordingly, had ample grounds not only for asserting that Milton 
"Excell'd All Ancients and Moderns," but for adding, "I take leave 
to Say so upon Many Good Authorities." ^ 

There can, then, be no question that from the beginning of the 
century Milton's greatness was recognized by all, that he was, by 
pretty general consent, at least the equal of Homer and Virgil, that 
his epic was extravagantly praised by many, and that each of his 
shorter pieces was regarded by some persons as the greatest of its 
kind ever written. 

The effect upon the public of such an increasing flow of Miltonic 
adulation must have been very great. So great indeed was it that — 
by an impish irony which would have dehghted Swift — the most 
austere and lofty of EngHsh poets became, in a notably artificial and 
prosaic age, the fashion. There can be no question of the fact. Even 
Johnson bears unwilhng and scornful witness to it by protesting that 
Addison "has made Milton an universal favourite, with whom read- 
ers of every class think it necessary to be pleased." ^ Nor was the 
idea pecuHar to Johnson; for some years earlier Gibber had affirmed 
that as a result of the Spectator papers "it became even unfashion- 
able not to have read" Milton.^ Warburton also, according to 

1 Dodsley's Museum (1747)) iii- 284. 

* To Health, in Odes (1746), 18. Cf. an anonymous poem entitled Milton (Univ. 
Mag., 1780, Ixvii. 375): 

Unenvying Greece and Rome their claims resign, 
And own the palm of Poetry is thine. 

Thomas Newcomb said almost the same thing in the second stanza of his On Milton's 
Paradice Lost {Miscellaneous Poems, 1740, p. 17). 

* xviii. 328 (1764). 

* William Massey, Remarks upon P. L. (1761), p. iv 

* Explanatory Notes (1734), P- xiv. 

' "Addison," in Lives (ed. Hill), ii. 147 (Good, p. 257). 
^ Lives (1753), V. 196 n. (Good, pp. 257-8). 



MILTON'S FAME 23 

Gray, spoke of ''the World . . . obliged by fashion to admire" 
Milton and Shakespeare; and the dilettante Horace Walpole asked 
a friend to procure him "a print of Vallombrosa," because of the 
"passion there is for it in England, as Milton has mentioned it." ^ 

As late as 1793 John Aikin declared, "A relish for the works of 
Milton is not only a test of sensibility to the more exquisite beauties 
of poetry, but a kind of measure of the exaltation of the mind in its 
moral and rehgious sentiments." ^ Thomas Warton, though unwill- 
ing to go so far as this, anticipated Tennyson's oft-quoted dictum by 
asserting, "He who wishes to know whether he has a true taste for 
Poetry or not, should consider, whether he is highly deHghted or not 
with the perusal of Milton's Lycidas." ^ "He who professes he has 
no Taste for Milton,^' remarked still another, "is justly deemed to 
have no Taste for Polite Literature," * a phrase that recalls Steele's 
surprising reference to Otway, Milton, and Dryden as among "the 
most polite Writers of the Age." ^ But Steele had previously im- 
phed that the loftiest of English poets occupied this anomalous posi- 
tion; for in one of the early numbers of the Tatler Mr. Bickerstaff 
visits Sappho, "a fine lady " who, through breaking a fan "wherein 
were so admirably drawn our first parents in Paradise asleep in each 
other's arms," has been led to "reading the same representation in 
two of our greatest poets. . . . All Milton's thoughts," declares the 
fair chatterer, "are wonderfully just and natural, in this inimitable 
description. . . . But now I cannot forgive this odious thing, this 
Dryden." On a later occasion Sappho repeats to some ladies lines 
from two poets, Sir John Suckling and Milton, who had said "the 
tenderest things she had ever read" on the subject of love; and in 
still another issue of the Tatler Milton's lines on wedded love are 
quoted at a wedding breakfast.^ No wonder Pope remarked, "Our 
wives read Milton." ^ But even in 1702, when Steele was just be- 
ginning to write, a would-be wit and critic was represented as slight- 

1 See Gray's letter to Wharton, Oct. 7, 1757, and Walpole's to Horace Mann, May 
13, 1752 (Good, pp. 183, 219). 

2 Letters from a Father to his Son (1800), ii. 269 (Good, p. 138). 

3 In his edition of Milton's minor poems (1785), p. 34. 

■* John Marchant, in his edition of Paradise Lost (1751), p. viii. 

^ This is the more significant because it occurs in the Ladies Library (1714), i. 2-4 
(Good, p. 157). 

^ Tatler, nos. 6, 40, 79. In the Student (1751, ii. 381), "a giddy young girl" named 
Flirtilla falls into "a rhapsodic vision" while reading Milton's description of Pande- 
monium (Good, p. 184); and Elizabeth Rowe speaks of a young lady who was so ab- 
sorbed in reading Milton in the park as not to notice an approaching admirer {Works, 
1796, i. lis). 

^ Imitations of Horace, II. i. 172. 



24 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

ing Shakespeare, Jonson, Dryden, and Congreve, but as being "a. 
great Admirer of the incomparable Millon," whose ^^ Sublime'^ he 
"fondly endeavours to imitate." ^ 

The inevitable result of this homage was that it came to require 
courage to say anything whatever against "the favourite poet of 
this nation," as John Jortin called him.^ "Whoever," remarked the 
Monthly Revieiv in 1760, "at this time ventures to carp at . . . 
Paradise Lost, must whisper his criticism with caution"; ^ and even 
the great Chesterfield, in admitting to his son, "I cannot possibly 
read , . . Milton through," was constrained to add, "Keep this 
secret for me; for if it should be known, I should be abused by every 
tasteless pedant, and every solid divine, in England." * 

Presumably there were many who, like Chesterfield, dared not 
avow their indifference to a work which was regarded not only as 
"the finest poem in the world" but as a touchstone of poetic taste; 
yet such persons must have kept their thoughts to themselves, for 
adverse comments rarely found their way into print. And though 
some, no doubt, affected a liking for the epic which they did not feel, 
the genuine enthusiasm of hundreds of writers cannot be questioned. 
Milton must have been read, for imitations of his style and diction 
and borrowings from his phraseology are scattered through eight- 
eenth-century literature 

Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks 
In Vallombrosa. 

In fact, so many persons really knew the pieces that it was probably 
not safe to pretend to a knowledge which one did not possess. Even 
shepherds were observed "poring in the fields" over the epic; ^ and 
a Bristol milkwoman, Ann Yearsley, whose versifying was encour- 
aged by Hannah More, was "well acquainted" with the Night 
Thoughts and Paradise Lost but "was astonished to learn that 
Young and Milton had written anything else. Of Pope, she had 
only seen the Eloisa; and Dryden, Spenser, Thomson, and Prior, 
were quite unknown to her, even by name;" she had read "a few 

^ The English Theophrastus, or the Manners of the Age (attributed to Abel Boyer) , 10; 
pointed out in Dowden's Milton in the Eighteenth Century (British Acad., Proceedings, 
1907-8, p. 279). 

^ "Milton," in Remarks on Spenser's Poems (1734), 171. 

^ xxii. 119. The same idea is expressed by the " Gentleman of Oxford " in the preface 
to his New Version of the P. L. (see above, p. 6). 

^ Letter, Oct. 4, 1752. "I spoke of . . . Paradise Lost,'' wrote Cowper to Hayley, 
Feb. 24, 1793, "as every man must, who is worthy to speak of it at all." 

^ Boswell's Johnson (ed. Hill), iv. 43 n. 



MILTON'S FAME 25 

of Shakespeare's plays." ^ These facts almost make one accept at 
their face value such assertions as, " Para^we Lo^/ . . , is read with 
Pleasure and Admiration, by Persons of every Degree and Condi- 
tion;" - or, "The . . . Poem is in every One's Hand;" ^ or, "Re- 
markable therefore it is, that Paradise Lost and Young's Night 
Thoughts are read by all sorts of people. . . . the common people 
. . . are fond of Milton's poems." ^ 

So general, in fact, did this fondness become that children were 
early introduced to the poems. It will be remembered that the 
Swan of Lichfield "Usped" — if a swan may be permitted to lisp — 
Allegro and Penseroso "when only in her third year," and that 
Cowper's enthusiasm dated from his boyhood.^ Ebenezer Elliott 
could in his sixteenth year repeat the first, second, and sixth books 
of Paradise Lost "without missing a word";® and a twelve-year-old 
girl, CaroHne Symmons, was so 'passionately attached' to Milton 
that to have been the author of his octosyllabics she 'would have 
declined no personal sacrifice of face or form.' ^ In order that chil- 
dren might appreciate the beauties of Milton, editions of his poems 
were prepared especially for them. The popular clergyman. Dr. 
Dodd, recommended his Familiar Explanation oj the Poetical Works 
of Milton "especially to Parents, and those who have the Care of 
Youth; if they are desirous that their Children and Trusts should 
be acquainted with the Graces of the British Homer. . . . The fair 
Sex in particular," he added, "will receive great Advantages from 
it." ^ As early as 1717 a " Collection of Poems from our most Cele- 
brated English Poets, designed for the Use of Young Gentlemen and 

1 Mo. Rev., Ixxiii. 218 (1785). The reading of Paradise Lost was recommended in 
John Hill's Actor (1755, p. 96) as the ideal training for a player. 

2 William Massey, Remarks upon P. L. (1761), p. iii; cf. p. v, "this Book, that is 
now so universally read." 

^ James Paterson, Complete Commentary on P. L. (1744), p. ii. 

* Robert Potter, The Art of Criticism, as exemplified in Johnson's Lives of the Poets 
(1789), 184-5, 188. It should be observed, however, that William Hayley, in his life of 
Milton (2d ed., 1796, p. 226), speaks of him as "more admired than beloved," and that 
Cowper, in a letter to Hayley (May 9, 1 792) , owns it is " no small disgrace to us English 
that being natives of a country that has produced the finest poem in the world, so few of 
us ever look into it. I am acquainted myself," he continues, " with at least a score, who 
account themselves pretty good judges of poetry too, and persons of taste, who yet 
know no more of the poem than the mere subject of it." Neither of these men, however, 
would have been content with much less than idolatry of Milton, and Cowper at least 
did not have a wide or a representative circle of acquaintances. 

^ See pp. 7, 10, above. 

* Autobiography, in Athenaeum, Jan. 12, 1850, p. 48. 

^ Memoir appended to F. Wrangham's Raising of Jatrus' Daughter (1804), 25. 
^ Preface (dated 1761), pp. vi-vii. 



26 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Ladies, at Schools," ^ included eighteen selections from the epic and 
one from Samson, together with Dryden's hnes on Milton; and in 
1783 appeared The Beauties of Milton, Thomson, and Young, for "the 
rising youth of both sexes." Nearly half of Poetry Explained for 
Young People (1802), by the father of Maria Edgeworth, is devoted 
to Allegro and Penseroso; while still later in the century the great 
actress, Mrs. Siddons, made an abridgment of the epic for her chil- 
dren, because she "was naturally desirous that their minds should 
be inspired with an early admiration of Milton." This was after- 
wards published as The Story of our First Parents, selected from Para- 
dise Lost for the Use of Young Persons (1822). A similar work, The 
Story of Paradise Lost for Children,^ a prose dialogue which included 
some of the original verse, was deemed worthy of repubhcation in 
New England, where, it is said, "during the greater part of the nine- 
teenth century . . . the Paradise Lost was practically a text-book. 
Children were compelled, as an exercise, to commit long passages of 
it by heart." ^ 

Such tasks were not always so distasteful as one might expect. 
We are told that the war of the angels was the "favourite of chil- 
dren," and we know that it was on the basis of his own boyhood en- 
thusiasm for the octosyllabics and the epic that Cowper recom- 
mended the memorizing of parts of them by another boy.^ It was 
natural that Milton should be urged upon children if there were 
many persons, as there seem to have been, who believed with Dr. 
Johnson that "in reading Paradise Lost we read a book of universal 
knowledge," ^ and especially if many agreed with a certain editor — 

^ The Virgin Muse, compiled by James Greenwood. 

2 By Eliza W. Bradburn, Portland, 1830, "first American, from the London edi- 
tion." Cf. below, p. 36. 

^ C. F. Adams, in the New York Nation, Ixxxvii. 600 (1908). According to Mr. 
Adams, the Puritans of the new world were fifty years behind the mother country in 
their recognition of the religious epic. "Milton's poems," he writes, "were almost 
unknown in New England until about the middle of the eighteenth century. There is 
no well-authenticated case of a copy of Paradise Lost on a Massachusetts book-shelf 
before that period yet brought to light. From about the year 1750 to the beginning of 
the nineteenth century there is abundant evidence of growing familiarity." Many 
Americans now living learned grammar by parsing Paradise Lost. 

* Potter, Art of Criticism, 13; Cowper to William Unwin, Jan. 17, 1782, and cf. pp. 
7, 10, above. "Milton is my favourite," wrote the profligate Lord Lyttelton in the 
third quarter of the century; "... I read him with delight as soon as I could read at 
all" (quoted in Thomas Frost's life of Lyttelton, 1876, pp. 3-4). Southey tells us that 
Paradise Lost was one of the first books he owned {Lije and Correspondence, 1849, i. 86) ; 
and W. S. Walker was deep in Milton at six years old (i. e., in 1801, see his Poetical 
Remains, ed. Moultrie, 1852, pp. iv-v). 

' "Milton," in Lives (ed. Hill), i. 183. Johnson probably refers to the first lines of 



MILTON'S FAME 27 

who, to be sure, was recommending a particular edition of the poem 
as a text-book — that, *'as it exhibits a view of every thing great in 
the whole circle of Being, it would (besides greatly improving them 
[schoolboys] in their own language) wonderfully open the capacity, 
improve the judgment, elevate the ideas, refine the imagination, 
and, finally, infuse a just and noble relish for all that is beautiful and 
great in the Aeneid and Iliad." ^ Two men, at least, seem to have 
shared this opinion. Edmund Burke, whose speeches abound with 
quotations from Milton, "always recommended the study of him to 
his son, and to all his younger friends, as exhibiting the highest pos- 
sible range of mind in the English language." ^ And Richard Baron 
wrote: "Milton in particular ought to be read and studied by all 
our young Gentlemen as an Oracle. He was a great and noble 
Genius, perhaps the greatest that ever appeared among men. . . . 
His works are full of wisdom, a treasure of knowledge." ^ 

But, though a boy were brought up in ignorance of Milton, the 
defect would probably be remedied at the university ; for, according 
to Robert Lloyd, ' Milton-madness ' was 

an afifectation 
Glean'd up from college education.* 

Even at the beginning of the century at least three Oxford professors 
of poetry, Joseph Trapp, Thomas Warton, and Joseph Spence, were 
imitators of Milton; Gray and the younger Thomas Warton lived at 
the universities, and most of the poet's enthusiastic admirers were 
college men. The extent of their enthusiasm is shown in the volumes 
of verse written by members of universities in celebration of various 
public events. These sumptuous folios and quartos are thickly 
strewn with octosyllabics and blank verse derived from Milton's 
work, as well as with phrases taken from it; and one of the coUec- 

Barrow's Latin verses prefixed to the second edition of Paradise Lost, which were thus 
translated in the Genlleman's Magazine, xxx. 291 (cf. p. 21 above): 

Who reads Lost Paradise, the fall 
Of wretched man, what reads he less than all? 

All nature's works; from whence they rose; 
Their fates and ends; these lofty lines disclose. 

Thomas Marriott says the same thing in his Female Conduct, i759> P- 99 (noted by 
Good, p. 83) ; and in the preface to the prose paraphrase of the epic we read, "It com- 
prehends almost every Thing within the Extent of human Knowledge." 

1 James Buchanan, First Six Books of P. L., rendered into Grammatical Construction 
(Edin., 1773), 1-2. 

* Prior's Burke (5th ed., 1854), 30. 

' Preface to Eikonoklastes, 1756 (Good, p. 175). 

* On Rhyme (written c.1760), in Poetical Works, 1774, ii. 112. 



28 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

tions contains as many as twenty pieces which employ the meter, 
style, and diction of Paradise Lost} 

It may be partly as a result of this early reading that Miltonic 
allusions rose so naturally to the lips even of "the general" in the 
eighteenth century. The word "monody," for instance, which is 
hardly more common to-day than it was before the appearance of 
Lycidas, was much used after 1740.^ The god Comus, too, became a 
recognized deity who existed quite apart from Milton's masque; ^ a 
"busto" of him, erected in a buffet at Hammersmith, attracted con- 
siderable attention, and the "temple of Comus" formed one of the 
most prominent features of Vauxhall.^ In this same resort, further- 
more, was a statue by the much-admired Roubillac which repre- 
sented Milton " 'seated on a rock, in an attitude [of] Kstening to soft 
music,' as described by himself, in his II Penseroso."^ As no place of 
amusement was more fashionable or popular than Vauxhall, this is 
as if a Hkeness of the poet were to face the board walk at Atlantic 
City. More private tributes are to be found in the facts that ten 
lines from Penseroso were inscribed in a room of the hermitage at 
Hagley Park,^ that there was "a beautiful Alcove called II Pense- 
roso " at the end of a garden walk in Surrey,^ and that Jane Porter 
and her sister were dubbed "L'AUegro " and " II Penseroso." 

Yet the vogue of the poems was not due entirely to the reading of 
Milton; for Comus, with abridged text, additional songs and dances, 
and attractive new music, came to be one of the most persistently 
popular musical entertainments of the century. At the same time, 
Samson Agonistes, the octosyllabics, and the version of the Psalms 
were repeatedly sung in Handel's very popular oratorios; the Song on 
May Morning and the hymn of Adam and Eve were set to music and 
"performed";^ Lycidas was presented as a "musical enter tain- 

1 See Bibl. I, 1761 {Pietas Oxon.). Two of the other collections of 1761 and 1762 
each contain twelve such pieces, and some eighteen or twenty more are listed in Bibli- 
ographies I and II under the years 1761, 1762,1763. Thomas Warton the younger had 
a good deal to do with several of these volumes. J. Husbands's Miscellany, published 
at Oxford in 1731, contains ten poems that are significantly influenced by Paradise Lost 
and one by Penseroso. ^ See below, pp. 549-55, 680-81. 

^ I have collected over twenty passages in which the god Comus is spoken of with 
apparently no thought of Milton. The latest is in Byron's English Bards, line 650. 

* Pearch's Collection (1783), i. 329; Austin Dobson's "Old Vauxhall," Eighteenth 
Century Vignettes (ist series, 1892), 241. 

* Dobson, ib. 244. 

' Joseph Heely, Letters on Hagley, etc. (1777), i. 193 (Good, p. 211). 

^ Lotid. Mag., xxxii. 554 (1763). 

^ Cf. pp. 430-32 below. For the Song, with music by M. C. Festing, see Miscellany 
of Lyric Poems performed in the Academy of Music (1740), 61-2; the hymn, "set to 
musick" by J. E. Galliard, was published in 1728 and 1773. 



MILTON'S FAME 29 

ment" in memory of the Duke of York; ^ parts of Allegro and the 
Arcades were used as songs in Garrick's opera, The Fairies (1755); 
and Paradise Lost was arranged for an oratorio at least four times, 
•once by the great Mrs. Delany for Handel and once as the basis of 
Haydn's Creation." Considerable interest was also aroused by 
Fuseli's " Milton Gallery," where paintings for an edition of the poet 
were exhibited during parts of two successive years (1799, 1800). 
Eut the most curious of these extra-literary evidences of a general 
interest in the poet is afforded by Philip de Loutherbourg's "Eido- 
phusikon." This precursor of the "Johnstown Flood" and the 
moving pictures, which consisted of cardboard models skilfully illumi- 
nated by colored Hghts, enjoyed unusual popularity in the years 1781 
and 1786 and was warmly commended even by Reynolds and Gains- 
borough. The culminating scene was "Satan arraying his Troops 
on the Banks of the Fiery Lake, with the Raising of Pandemonium, 
from Milton." ^ 

The vitality of the enthusiasm for Milton in the eighteenth cen- 
tury is indicated by the storms of protest which broke over the heads 
of any who dared attack him. Three books in particular roused the 
fury of the poet's "idolators." The first was the 1732 edition of 
Paradise Lost undertaken at the suggestion of Queen Caroline by the 
great classical scholar Richard Bentley, who pretended to believe 
that the blind poet's assistants, besides misunderstanding his dicta- 
tion and admitting errors through carelessness, had deliberately in- 
troduced many changes into the text. "Slashing Bentley," as Pope 
termed him, accordingly substituted " a transpicuous gloom" for the 
famous "darkness visible," and bracketed as interpolations the line 
Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides 

and the one that follows it, as well as the superb passage which ends, 

When Charlemain with all his peerage fell 
By Fontarabbia. 

These last lines, which were termed "a heap of barbarous Words, 
without any Ornament or Poetical colouring," Bentley would have 

1 Lycidas, a Musical Entertainment, the words altered from Milton [by William 
Jackson], 1767. 

* See Mrs. Delany's Autobiography and Correspondence, 1861, ii. 280 (letter to Mrs. 
Dewes, March 10, 1743/4). Mrs. Delany's arrangement and that of Richard Jago 
(Adam, 1784?) were never sung; but Benjamin Stillingfleet's, set to music by Handel's 
pupil and assistant J. C. Smith, was printed and twice performed in 1760. Haydn, as 
Mr. Alwin Thaler points out in his Milton in the Theatre (Univ. of North Carolina, 
Studies in Philology, xvii. 283-4), used a German rendering of a libretto made by a Mr. 
Lidley (or Liddell), which was later put back into EngUsh. 

^ Austin Dobson, At Prior Park, etc. (191 2), 1 14-16, 280. 



30 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

omitted, because Milton ''surely . . . had more Judgment in his 
old Age, than to clog and sully his Poem with such Romantic 
Trash." Changes Hke these — and there are hundreds of them — 
are to-day simply amusing, or amazing, instances of misapplied in- 
genuity, but on their first appearance they were regarded as a seri- 
ous matter and called forth immediate protest. The magazines were 
filled with essays and verses, the booksellers' windows with pam- 
phlets, satires, and learned refutations of the "sacrilege" to Mil- 
ton's work. Bentley's name became synonymous with pedantic 
folly, and is embalmed as such in The Dimciad and in the critical 
essays and notes that accompany it. Sneers and execrations con- 
tinued to be directed at his work throughout the century, but 
within fifteen years popular interest was diverted to a new wonder. 

This was the charge brought by the Rev. William Lauder that 
considerable parts of Paradise Lost were simply paraphrases of little- 
known foreign poets. The accusation, first made in the Gentleman's 
Magazine for January, 1747, reached its fullest development in an 
Essay on Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns, published 
towards the close of 1 749. If Bentley's emendations had called up a 
storm of protest, Lauder's writings roused a tempest. Inquiries, 
protests, denials, reviews, lampoons, and prophecies, in both prose 
and verse, were poured upon the bloody but unbowed head of Mil- 
ton's detractor. In the main, however, the charges were not dis- 
proved until November, 1750, when the Bishop of Salisbury showed 
that the passages which Milton was accused of borrowing were not 
in the works referred to but had been taken by Lauder from William 
Hog's Latin translation of Paradise Lost (1690).^ The attention at- 
tracted by the forgery is indicated not only by the ten books or 
pamphlets written upon it, and by the articles, nearly forty in num- 
ber, which a single magazine devoted to the subject, but by many 
humbler protests, such as "Verses intended to have been spoken at 
the Breaking-up of the Free Grammar school in Manchester, in . . . 
1748, when Lauder's charge of Plagiarism upon Milton engaged the 
Public Attention." ^ 

Upon the detection of the fraud. Dr. Johnson, who had written 
the preface to Lauder's book, dictated a letter of confession and 
apology which he compelled the offender to publish over his own 

1 Sir John Douglas, Milton vindicated from the Charge of Plagiarism (1751). Oddly 
enough, Lauder had himself, in his translation of Grotius's Eucharistia (1732), made 
some use of the verse and style of Paradise Lost. 

2 John Byrom, Poems (Chetham Soc, 1894), i. 178-92. Byrom's loyalty to Milton 
is the more interesting because he was not an admirer of blank verse (see ib. 387-93, and, 
for his controversy with Roger Comberbach on the subject, 411-28). 



MILTON'S FAME 3 1 

name; yet the readiness with which the Doctor believed charges 
which most persons doubted seems to indicate an antipathy to 
Milton that is unquestionably present in his life of the poet (1779). 
In this work, which is marred by gratuitous sneers, misrepresenta- 
tion of motives, and a willingness to beHeve the worst things that 
had been said of its subject, Milton's character, political activities, 
and prose writings are treated with the intense partisanship of a 
bigoted Tory. The ire of the poet's admirers was immediately 
aflame, and the biographer received as rough treatment as he had 
given. Within a year of the appearance of the Life, Archdeacon 
Francis Blackburne twice published a lengthy arraignment of "the 
meanness . . . the virulent malignity" exhibited by "the grand 
exemplar of literary prostitution," in which he thus explained John- 
son's reasons for writing the biography: "When the Doctor found, 
on some late occasions, that his crude abuse and malicious criticisms 
would not bring down Milton to the degree of contempt with the 
public which he had assigned him in the scale of prose- writers ; he 
fell upon an expedient which has sometimes succeeded in particular 
exigencies. In one word, he determined to write his Life." ^ These 
are harsh words for an archdeacon, and there are harsher in his book ; 
but they are all less surprising than the exclamation of the sweet- 
spirited recluse of Olney, "Oh! I could thresh his old jacket, till I 
made his pension jingle in his pocket." " Nor was Cowper's wrath 
short-lived, for thirteen years later he refers to "that Uterary cos- 
sack's strictures" on his idol, and bursts out with, "Oh that John- 
son! how does every page of his on the subject, ay, almost every 
paragraph, kindle my indignation!" ^ 

Indeed, anger at Johnson's biography flamed many a year after 
Cowper was no more. In 18 18, almost four decades after the appear- 
ance of the offending work, another writer devoted an entire book to 
attacking it. This critic found the Doctor's "antipathy so marked, 
so virulent and unrelenting," his "enmity" so "inexorable," that it 
was "difficult to conjecture into what vehemence of angry reproach 
it might have hurried him had it not been bridled by his awe of the 
pubHc."^ 

1 Remarks on Johnson's Life of Milton (1780), 131, 148, 22-3. The Remarks first 
appeared in Blackburne's Memoirs of Thomas Hollis (1780), 533*-84*- 

2 Cowper's letter to William Unwin, Oct. 31, 1779; cf. also Jan. 17, 1782, and March 
21, 1784. 

3 To William Hayley, Oct. 13 and May i, 1792; and cf. Nov. 22, 1793. In a letter 
to Walter Bagot, May 2, 1791 (cf. also March 18, 1791), Cowper promises a "future 
letter" in which "Johnson gets another slap or two." 

* T. H. White, Remew of Johnson's Criticism on Milton's Prose (1818), 29-30. 



32 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

The bitterness against Johnson — and it was widespread — is the 
more remarkable because, aside from Lycidas and the sonnets, Mil- 
ton's poems received far more commendation from the Ursa Major 
of literature than one would expect; to the epic in particular he gave 
extensive and very high praise. All this approbation, however, was 
swept aside by the devotees of the poet on the ground that the Doctor 
dared not do less. "He praises Milton," flared Miss Seward, "under 
the eye of the public as Pistol eat his leek under that of Fluellen. 
After all, he endeavours to do away, collectively, all his reluctant 
praise of that glorious and beautiful poem, by observing, that no 
person closes its pages with the desire of recurring to them. ... A 
self-evident, I could almost say an impudent falsehood." ^ Clearly, 
Milton's admirers were not easily satisfied. Is it any wonder that 
Richard Edgeworth feared lest some persons would "deem it a 
species of literary sacrilege to criticize any part of" the octosylla- 
bics,^ when Cowper was so displeased with some remarks made by 
the great Miltonian, Thomas Warton, that he wrote, "Warton in 
truth is not much better " than Johnson and " deserves . . . to lose 
his own" ear because he "has dared to say that he [Milton] had a 
bad one"? ^ 

However interesting in itself, such sensitiveness to any criticism 
of their "idol" would be of little importance if it had been Kmited 
to a few persons; what gives these controversies their significance 
is the large number who took part in them. "The question, 
whether Milton borrow'd from Masenius" wrote an Englishman in 
Louvain to the Gentleman's Magazine, "concerns, in my opinion, the 
whole nation";* and the whole nation seems to have taken the 
matter as its concern. All of which is inconceivable to-day. When 

1 Letters (1811), iv. 133. Other criticisms of Johnson's Life will be found in the 
Gentleman's Magazine, xlix. 492-3 (1779, two letters) , lix. 413-17; Monthly Review, Ixi. 
81-92 (1779), Ixii. 479-83; Horace Walpole's letters to William Mason, Oct. 13, 1780, 
Feb. 5 and 19, 178 1, April 14, 1782 (in the last of these he says that Thomas Stratford 
"cannot bear the name of Johnson, for his paltry acrimony against Milton"); Lord 
Monboddo's letter to Sir George Baker, Oct. 2, 1782 (William Knight's Lord Monboddo, 
etc., 1900, p. 214); Robert Potter's Art of Criticism (1789), 6-19; Philip Neve's Cursory 
Remarks on English Poets (1789), 113, 134; Thomas Twining's letter to his brother, 
May 3, 1784 {Country Clergyman of the Eighteenth Century, 1882, p. 120). Johnson's 
criticisms of Samson {Rambler, 1751, nos. 139, 140) were refuted by W. J. Mickle and 
Richard Cumberland {Europ. Mag., 1788, xiii. 401-6; Observer, 1788, no. in). 

2 Poetry explained for Young People (1802), p. ix. 

3 Letters to Hayley, May i, 1792, and Lady Hesketh, March 6, 1786; and cf . below, 
p. 57, n. 5. Samuel Darby's pamphlet of forty-one pages, Letter to T. Warton on his 
Edition of Milton's Juvenile Poems (1785), though not hostile in tone, is another illus- 
tration of the amount of attention Milton attracted. 

* xvii. 567 (Good, p. 189). 



MILTON'S FAME 



33 



we remember our perfunctory celebrations of the centenaries of 
Shakespeare and Milton, we can hardly believe that there ever was 
a time when for four years the most popular magazine of the day 
printed article after article regarding an alleged literary plagiarism, 
and when even schoolboys declaimed upon the subject. It is harder 
still to realize that any large number of persons ever became deeply 
interested in revisions of the text of a poet sixty years dead. 

These astonishing tributes to the "immeasurably great" popular- 
ity of one who expected his audience to be "few" require explana- 
tion. How did it happen that poems which are to-day the admira- 
tion of a relatively small number excited, a century and a half ago, 
the enthusiasm of many? One reason immediately suggests itself, — 
the religious character of the epic. The avowed purpose of Paradise 
Lost is to "justify the ways of God to men," and its persistent and 
noble prosecution of that purpose has made it the greatest religious 
poem in English. Nowadays this aspect of the work is either over- 
looked or remembered with little satisfaction. To most of us the 
ways of Milton's anthropomorphic God are neither justified nor 
made attractive; we find little in his two major poems that seems 
distinctively Christian, little of the patient love for erring men and 
the yearning to help them that breathe in the parables of the prodi- 
gal son and the good shepherd. But in the eighteenth century, 
when the more tender aspects of Christianity were emphasized 
much less than they are now, their absence was little felt; then 
theology was more important, and to most of the orthodox the Puri- 
tan justification was satisfactory. The dissenters in particular, who 
counted Milton peculiarly their own, — as he was, — frequently 
held his epic second in importance only to the Bible. 

Among the earhest of his admirers and imitators, as we shall see 
later, was a group of writers who seem to have caught their enthusi- 
asm at the nonconformist academy they attended in boyhood ; and 
not a few of his other "adorers," like John Toland, Richard Baron, 
Thomas Hollis, did not belong to the estabhshed church. But all, 
the orthodox Addison, the deistic Thomson, the Catholic Pope, all 
agreed as to the importance of the moral and reUgious, the con- 
sciously didactic, element in poetry. A main point in Dennis's criti- 
cism was "that Religion is the Basis and Foundation of the greater 
Poetry," ^ and so late as 1797 the Monthly Review spoke of poetry as 
simply "a happy vehicle for conveying instruction." ^ Addison was 

1 Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704), 94. 

2 Enlarged ed., xxiv. 460. The preacher's life should correspond with his instruc- 
tion; hence Pope's anxiety that his life be regarded as "the nobler song." "I much 



34 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

even willing to mar the perfect conclusion of Paradise Lost by omit- 
ting the last two lines, in order that the poem might end with the 
words "and Providence their guide." The rehgious aspects of the 
epic unquestionably had much to do with the admiration it awak- 
ened in Dennis, Addison, Thomson, Young, Cowper, and even 
Wordsworth. It was this side of the work that called forth John- 
son's highest praise and so deeply impressed Gildon that he censured 
Addison for discussing the poem as an epic. Paradise Lost, he main- 
tained, "is not an heroic poem, but a divine one, and indeed a new 
species." ^ It must be remembered that a large number of the 
writers of this period were clergymen, and also that men by no 
means distinguished for their piety were unanimous in thinking that 
all great hterature teaches religion and morality. For it was at once 
the weakness and the strength of the eighteenth century that writers 
and critics of the period did not regard literary beauty as its own 
excuse for being. Even among the frivolous and the dissipated Para- 
dise Lost would never have achieved the reputation it did, if it had 
not been a moral and religious power. Not, of course, that the genu- 
ine liking which many of the fashionable felt for the poem was due 
primarily to its lofty ethical value; yet without that they might 
never have read it at all, and would certainly not have held it in that 
profound respect which was the basis of its popularity. 

But, though important even with the frivolous, the religious ele- 
ment loomed large indeed with the more serious of the gentry and 
with the middle class. There were thousands of readers upon whom 
the supreme poetic gifts of Milton were practically wasted, devout 
persons who regarded his richly-colored epic as little more than a 
rehgious tract. The humble folk who for a century had been thrilled 
by Fox's Book of Martyrs and had consumed edition after edition of 
the despised Pilgrim'' s Progress, were also attracted to Paradise Lost. 
To make the poem intelligible to them various devices were em- 
ployed. Annotation, the most obvious expedient, was of course 
repeatedly used; and some editions, like the Rev. Dr. Dodd's 
Familiar Explanation (1762), were addressed particularly to the 
young and the uneducated.^ Omission of classical allusions, in- 
volved similes, and other difficult passages was tried by John 

more resent," he wrote to Aaron Hill, Feb. 5, 1730/31, "any attempt against my moral 
character, which I know to be unjust, than any to lessen my poetical one, which . . . 
may be very just." See also T. R. Lounsbury's Text oj Shakespeare (N. Y., 1906) , 468- 
82. The constant advocacy of Paradise Lost in the Taller and the Spectator may have 
been part of the campaign of uplift to which those periodicals were devoted. 

1 Laws of Poetry (1721), 259. 

* See above, p. 25. 



MILTON'S FAME 35 

Wesley/ and also, with astonishing results, by "a Gentleman of 
Oxford." ^ In the last-mentioned product of academic leisure there 
was an attempt to remove from the poem not only its learning and 
obscurity but its long sentences and its "roughness," an experiment 
which led to such nondescript verse as this: 

Of Adam's Fall, and the forbidden Tree, 

Whose Fruit brought Sin and Death into the World, 

With Loss of Paradise and Immortality, 

To Him and to his Sons — sing, heavenly Muse! 

But the assistance which the less educated readers found most to 
their taste was more direct and even more astonishing than these 
makeshifts. It was a prose version, and, what is more, an English 
translation of a French translation of the original. In 1729 Dupre 
de St. Maur published in Paris, and in 1743 reissued with correc- 
tions, a translation of Milton's epic into French prose, which two 
years later was put back into Enghsh, probably by the same "Gen- 
tleman of Oxford." ^ The work was printed ten times, and obvi- 
ously for religious reasons, since it is made up of this sort of thing: 

Thus Satan kept talking to Beelzebub, with his Head lifted up above 
the Waves, and glancing his Eyes from Side to Side: As for his other 
Parts, he lay extended in a melancholy Condition, floating in Length and 
Breadth over a vast Space of the Abyss.^ 

Another attempt, made in 1773, to render the poem intelligible to 
"persons of a common Education" was James Buchanan's "First 
Six Books of Milton's Paradise Lost, rendered into Grammatical 
Construction; the words of the Text being arranged, at the bottom 
of each Page, in the same natural Order with the Conceptions of the 
mind; and the Ellipsis properly supphed, without any Alteration in 
the Diction of the Poem," — this is but a third of the complete title! 
John Gillies's edition of the poem, "illustrated with Texts of Scrip- 
ture," pubhshed in 1788 and reprinted in 1793, affords a further in- 
dication of the number of readers who associated Milton, not with 

^ Extract from P. L. (1791). In the first book alone such omissions amount to over 
220 lines, and include many of the finest passages. A similar free use of the scissors 
reduces the first five lines of the second book to "High on a throne, Satan exalted sat." 

^ A New Version of the P. L. , in which the Measure and Versification are corrected and 
harmonized, the Obscurities elucidated, and the Faults removed [book i only], Oxford, 1756 
(said to be the work of G. S. Green) . 

^ The State of Innocence and Fall of Man, rendered into Prose, with notes from the 
French of Raymond de St. Maur, "by a Gentleman of Oxford," 1745. At least two prose 
versions of Paradise Regained were also published, one in 1771 {The Recovery of Man) 
and the other with Paradise Lost in 1775. 

* Page 11; cf. P. L., i. 192-6. 



36 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Shakespeare and Spenser, but with Bunyan, Fox, and Watts; for 
the notes consist simply of passages from the Bible. Even so late as 
1830 there appeared in Portland, Maine, the Story of Paradise Lost 
for Children,^ an, innocuous work of the old Sunday-school-library 
type which has fortunately passed away. The "story," with many 
quotations from the original, some of considerable length, is drawn 
from "Mamma," who talks Hke a rhetoric, by EHza, Emily, and 
William, children of awful goodness and wisdom, all under eleven 
years of age ! Through such paraphrases as these Milton reached a 
class of persons who read little poetry of any sort and none of the 
rank of an epic, yet some of whom must have been attracted from 
the prose versions to the original. The extent of the influence ex- 
erted in this way cannot be measured, but no doubt it was in part 
due to these prose renderings that Paradise Lost was thought to have 
"contributed more to support the orthodox creed, than all the bodies 
of divinity that were ever written." ^ 

But there were reasons other than the religious why Milton's 
poetry roused more enthusiasm in the days of Pope and of the 
Wartons than it does now. For one thing, it was much more of a 
novelty : the dew of its morning was still upon it. Not, of course, 
that Paradise Lost was new at any time in the eighteenth century ; 
but it was different, people had not become accustomed to it, and 
in consequence it had not sunk into the position of respected neg- 
lect occupied by most classics. Even late in the century a first 
reading of it often had something of the thrill of discovery. 

This difference between Milton's work and that of other poets 
impressed the neo-classicists strongly because their literature, both 
what they wrote and what they read, was in almost every respect 
far less like Paradise Lost than ours is. To be sure, Milton's poetry 
resembles that of the Elizabethans, but about most of this earlier 
verse his readers knew little and cared less. What struck them as 
particularly different from their own work was the daring wildness 
of the epic. It was "read by all sorts of people ... for its extrava- 
gance," we are told.^ Such terms as "magnificently wild," a "genius 

^ By Eliza W. Bradburn. 

^ Mo. Rev., enl. ed., 1792, ix. 5 (Good, p. 220). Cf. Huxley's remark apropos of the 
notion that the universe was suddenly created from chaos: "I believe it is largely to the 
influence of that remarkable work [Paradise Lost] . . . that this hypothesis owes its 
general wide diffusion" ("Lectures on Evolution," 1876, in Science and Hebrew Tradi- 
tion, N. Y., 1894, p. 52). 

^ R. Potter, Art of Criticism (1789), 185. Philip Neve (Cursory Remarks on English 
Poets, 1789, p. 141) praises "the terror excited by the sublimity" of Milton's "design." 
The wildness and extravagance of the epic had impressed people from the first; it was 
on this account that Addison devoted his Spectator papers to proving the regularity of 
the poem. 



MILTON'S FAME 



37 



. . . Astonishing as chaos," ^ were frequently applied to its author, 
who was regarded as a kind of Michaelangelo of verse, less regular 
than Homer and Virgil but, in the words of Dennis, "more lofty, 
more terrible, more vehement, more astonishing," and with "more 
impetuous and more divine Raptures." ^ Collins pictured him 

High on some cliff, to heaven up-piled, 
Of rude access, of prospect wild, 
Where, tangled round the jealous steep. 
Strange shades o'erbrow the valleys deep.^ 

Gray praised "that enchanting air of freedom and wildness" in his 
versification; * and another poet mentioned "splendid Acts" which 
"require A Milton, or a Muse of Fire." ^ It was of Milton that 
Isaac Watts immediately thought when he invoked the "Adventur- 
ous Muse." " Give me," he wrote, 

Give me the Muse whose generous Force 
Impatient of the Reins 

Pursues an unattempted Course, 

Breaks all the Criticks Iron Chains, 
And bears to Paradise the raptur'd Mind. 

There Milton dwells: The Mortal sung 

Themes not presum'd by mortal Tongue; 

New Terrors and new Glories shine 
In every Page, and flying Scenes Divine 
Surprize the wond'ring Sense, & draw our Souls along.* 

The same characteristics were emphasized by the figures of speech 
under which Milton was described. He is an "Eagle, wonderful in 
his soarings, [who] shews in his very stoops the power of his wing"; 
he "pours upon us a torrent of images, great and terrible"; or, to 
versify the figure, 

Milton is like a Flood, whose Tide, 
Swell'd with tempestuous Deluge, roars, 
Which from some lofty Mountain's Side 
Resistless foams, and knows no Shores.' 

^ Robert Merry, Diversity, 1788, in British Album (Boston, 1793), 231; Thomson, 
Summer, 1569-70. 

^ Reflections upon an Essay upon Criticism, 1711, p. 17 (Good, p. 150). 

' Ode on the Poetical Character, 55-8. 

* Observations on English Metre, in Works (ed. Mitford), v. 233. 

5 G. T. Ridsdale, Ode, Congratulatory, etc. (Dublin, 1799), 14. 

^ Adventurous Muse, in Horae Lyricae (2d ed., 1709), 212. Half of the piece is de- 
voted to Milton, who is the only poet mentioned. 

' Daniel Webb, Remarks on the Beauties of Poetry (1762), 13; Leonard Welsted, 
"Remarks on Longinus," 171 2, Works (1787), 422; Verses to the Author, "by a Divine," 
in Stephen Duck's Poems (1738), 129. 



(/ 



38 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

"In his most exalted flights," wrote Leonard Welsted, "... he 
appears to me as a vast comet, that for want of room is ready to 
burst its orb and grow eccentric." ^ 

This last comment, like some of the passages previously quoted, 
hints that Paradise Lost was not in complete conformity with the 
neo-classic rules, a charge that was often made and freely admitted 
even by Milton's admirers. Dennis, who touched upon nearly all 
aspects of the work, characterized it as "the most lofty, but most 
irregular Poem, that has been produc'd by the Mind of Man " ; ^ and 
a writer in the Bee, in 1732, declared Milton to be "a prodigious, 
tho' an irregular Genius." ^ It may be remembered that when 
Boileau, in Lyttelton's dialogue, referred to the critics who were dis- 
turbed by the "absurdities" and "extravagant fictions" of the 
poem, Pope replied that Milton's "Genius was indeed so vast and 
sublime, that his Work seems beyond the Limits of Criticism." * 
This defence, though it sounds strangely romantic, was the one 
usually offered. Samuel Wesley thought the English Homer "rather 
above the common Rules of Epic than ignorant of them"; ^ Gray, 
who was the antithesis of an irregular or formless poet, praised Mil- 
ton's versification for being "unconfined by any rules but those 
which his own feeling and the nature of his subject demanded";^ 
and Watts wrote. 

Immortal Bard! Thus thy own Raphael sings, 
And knows no Rule but native Fire.^ 

Even to Addison Paradise Lost seemed "above the critic's nicer 
laws," ^ a view that is particularly interesting because the Spectator 
papers were devoted to proving that the poem conformed to the 
critic's laws. 

1 " Remarks on Longinus," 1712, Works (1787), 405. 

2 Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704), prefatory "Specimen," sign. bi. 

3 i. 449 (1733)- 

* See p. 19 above. An opinion similar to this is to be found in John Newbery's 
(Goldsmith's?) Art of Poetry (1762), ii. 348. 

^ Life of our Blessed Lord (1693), preface. 

® Observations on English Metre, in Works (ed. Mitford), v. 233-4. 

^ Adventurous Muse, in Horae Lyricae (1709), 213. 

* Account of the Greatest English Poets, in Works (Bohn ed.), i. 24. So, too, WilHam 
Somervile praises Thomson for being "above the critic's nicer law " {Epistle to Thomson, 
1730, in Anderson's British Poets, viii. 503-4); and Robert Lloyd writes {On Rhyme, in 
Poetical Works, 1774, ii. 109), 

But critics (who still judge by rules, 
Transmitted down as guides to fools, 
And howsoe'er they prate about 'em, 
Drawn from wise folks who writ without 'em). 



MILTON'S FAME 39 

It is probable that Addison and many others really held, in a con- 
fused way, to both these opinions. They felt Milton's profound 
classicism and essential correctness; yet they saw that his work was 
strangely unhke their own and the French classical productions, and 
could not be completely reconciled with the letter at least of the 
rules. It is significant of their unconscious dissatisfaction with their 
own critical standards that most persons liked the irregularities, that 
they found the wildness pleasantly disturbing. Presumably a good 
many felt vaguely what one of them wrote, "Accuracy and Correct- 
ness are without doubt Advantages . . . but still they are not Es- 
sentials"; ^ and some may have been not far from Dennis's opinion, 
"The first and grand Rule in the greater Poetry is, that a Poet must 
every where excite great Passion," or " Enthusiasm." ^ Milton's art 
was by no means appreciated at this time; his style was thought to 
be rough, much less finished than Pope's or even Shakespeare's, and 
he was at times censured for not having "fil'd oft' his Rust" or 
"learned to poHsh some rudeness in his verses." ^ Yet this very 
rudeness attracted not a few, and by the majority was accepted as 
a natural drawback of the poet's fascinating irregularity. 

It must not be supposed, however, that Milton was thought of as 
a barbarian. His roughness seemed very different from that of 
Donne, or of Chaucer and his contemporaries; he was free from the 
formlessness of Spenser, and his wildness was not the extravagance 
which many found excessive in the Faerie Queene and the Jerusalem 
Delivered. The Augustans enjoyed Kterary adventures but wished 
them to be decorous; they liked a certain amount of the unusual but 
had no taste for roughing it. Their classicism, though not extreme, 
went deep. Milton could never have held his great body of readers 
if he also had not been fundamentally classical, if those who read 
Paradise Lost had not felt back of its romantic wildness the stand- 
ards of Homer and Virgil, of Aristotle and Longinus, just as behind 
the freedom and apparent irregularity of its verse they were con- 
scious of the regular beat of the iambic pentameter. In the com- 
bination of classicism with romanticism lay Milton's strength. It 
was because his work preserved a balance between these conflict- 
ing elements that it was peculiarly adapted to a period of transition; 
that is what gave it an almost equal appeal not only to readers 

1 Dodsley's Museum (1747), iii. 284. 

2 Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704), 15. 

2 Verses prefixed to Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel (2d ed., 1681); Hume's His- 
tory of England (new ed., 1762), vi. 126. 



40 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

of opposing tastes but to the two forces at war in almost all readers. 
Robert Lloyd has summed up the whole matter in his line, 
Thus Milton, more correctly wild.^ 

To their correct wildness the shorter pieces as well as the epic owed 
much of their popularity. 

This freedom or irregularity which distinguished Milton's poetry 
was, as his followers and opponents dimly realized, neither super- 
ficial nor simply literary, but grew naturally out of his strong love of 
liberty in all fields. "His political notions," as Johnson informs us, 
"were those of an acrimonious and surly republican,"^ which is only 
the Doctor's Tory way of saying that, next to religion, the deepest 
feeling of the poet who postponed his chief work in order to write 
political pamphlets was a passion for liberty, a passion that flamed 
in the sonnets and in the speeches of Satan, that furnished the sub- 
ject of practically all his prose and the altar upon which were sacri- 
ficed his property, his eyesight, his best years, and almost his life 
itself. This love of freedom was another reason for the popularity of 
the poems; for those who shared it (and they were many in the pe- 
riod which culminated in the French Revolution), if they were also 
lovers of verse, came naturally to look upon Milton as the embodi- 
ment of their ideal and almost as the object of their worship. 

Thomas HolHs, the motto of whose life might well have been the 
words he inscribed in one of the books he presented to Harvard Col- 
lege, "Floreat Libertas," was a Milton enthusiast. He collected 
notes for an edition of the prose of his favorite author, republished 
Toland's account of his life, presented many editions of his works to 
libraries, defended him in the public press, acquired relics and 
portraits of him (one of which was the only thing he attempted to 
save from a fire), and gave his bed to Akenside in the hope that it 
might inspire an ode on the one whom he termed "my hero, and the 
guide of my paths." ^ To Hollis his hero was preeminently the 

^ A Dialogue, in Poetical Works (1774), ii. 11. It was mainly because Paradise 
Regained was more correctly tame, because it lacked the "magnificent images and 
romantic descriptions" of the earlier poem, that it was less successful: see Crit. Rev., 
xlv. 74 (Good, p. 218 n.) 

2 "Milton," in Lives (ed. Hill), i. 156. 

3 Francis Blackburne, Memoirs of Hollis (1780), 365-71; 107; 73, 126, 127-8, 154, 
167,491; 621-7; 86, 95, 106, 167, 513-14, *583*; 111-12. Instances of Hollis's interest 
are, indeed, to be found on almost every page of the Memoirs. In Blackburne's words 
(p. 526), Hollis "was indefatigable in his researches after every memorial of him 
[Milton] he could hear of." But, according to Richard Fenton (Memoirs of an Old Wig, 
1815, p. 127), it was at that time "the rage, not only to write the life of Milton, but to 
hunt out busts, paintings, prints, nay to trace him through all his different places of 
residence." 



MILTON'S FAME 



41 



"arch-defender of liberty." "It is to Milton, the divine Milton," he 
wrote, "and such as he . . . that we are beholden for all the mani- 
fold and unexampled blessings which we now every where enjoy." ^ 
Indeed, it is possible that, like several of his friends, HolHs was less 
interested in Comus and Paradise Lost than in the prose writings and 
the political activities of the Latin secretary of the Commonweal th.^ 
It was Johnson's misrepresentation of Milton's love of Kberty that 
called forth the denunciation from HoUis's biographer, Archdeacon 
Blackburne, who says frankly, "We profess however not to concern 
ourselves with Milton the poet." ^ 

One of the books that HoUis was accustomed to present to libra- 
ries in various parts of the world was Thomas Birch's edition of 
Milton's prose (i 738) . Birch was a pronounced Whig, and probably 
expressed his own views when he said in his biography of the poet,'' 
"As he look'd upon true and absolute Freedom to be the greatest 
Happiness of this Life, whether to Societies or single Persons, so he 
thought Constraint of any sort to be the utmost Misery." A revis- 
ion of Birch's work was brought out in 1753 by Richard Baron, an 
extremist as regards both religious and political liberty, who also 
issued a separate edition of the Eikonoklastes (1756). In the preface 
to the latter book Baron spoke of his author much as Wordsworth 
did in the sonnet "Milton, thou shouldst be Hving at this hour." 
"Many circumstances," he declared, "at present loudly call upon us 
to exert ourselves. Venality and corruption have well-nigh extin- 
guished all principles of Liberty. . . . One remedy for these evils, is 
to revive the reading of our old Writers. . . . milton in particular 
ought to be read and studied by all our young Gentlemen as an 
Oracle. He . . . combated Superstition and Tyranny of every 
form, and in every degree. Against them he employed his mighty 
Strength." The poet Thomson, who was a great admirer of all 
Milton's works and who wrote a long poem in praise of Hberty, com- 
bined his two enthusiasms in a preface to the Areopagitica (1738). 
Another worshipper, Auditor WiHiam Benson, who gave Dobson a 
thousand pounds for a Latin translation of Paradise Lost, erected 
the monument to its author in Westminster Abbey, had a medal 

1 Memoirs, 236, 93. 

2 At any rate, it was the prose works that he usually presented as gifts (see ib. 73, 
126, 127-8, 154); and he gave twenty guineas towards the publication of the Eikono- 
klastes {ib. 487-8). 

3 Ib. 514. For Blackburne's attack on Johnson, see above, p. 31. 
* Prefixed to his edition of the prose works (1738, P- lix). 



42 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

struck in his honor, and published a study of his versification/ was 
also a "devoted Whig"; and so was William Roscoe, who praised 
and imitated Milton.^ Accordingly, when we find a man of literary 
tastes, like the elder Nicholas Hardinge, described as a "determined 
and zealous Whig," we are pretty certain to learn that he was also 
"a great admirer of Milton." ^ The feelings of all such lovers of 
liberty are epitomized in HoUis's manuscript note regarding Mil- 
ton's coat of arms: "Those arms . . . are now in the possession of 
T. H., & mind him often of Milton & great Actions!" ^ 

As the century waned and the love of independence grew, bringing 
with it revolt and unrest of various kinds, there were many who were 
inspired, not only by the "great actions" of the "Milton of the com- 
monwealth," but by 

the unconquerable will . . . 
And courage never to submit or yield 

which flame in the speeches and deeds of his arch-rebel. " Give me a 
spirit," exclaimed Burns, "like my favourite hero, Milton's Satan," 
and then proceeded to quote four lines beginning "Hail, horrors! 
hail," which he and many another had doubtless often declaimed 
to the winds or to tavern companions.^ Shelley also, attracted by 
Satan's "courage, and majesty, and firm and patient opposition to 
omnipotent force," reminded his readers that "the sacred Milton 
was, let it ever be remembered, a republican and a bold inquirer into 
morals and religion." ^ 

It will be observed that Shelley here connects Milton not only 
with political but with religious liberty, and in the eighteenth cen- 
tury a great many did the same. Almost all of those who have been 
mentioned as enthusiasts over Milton and liberty were also liberals 
in rehgion, and in many instances were actively engaged in the fight 
for rehgious freedom. These men found inspiration not only in the 
character of Satan but in the life of the poet, in his anti-episcopal 

^ Letters concerning Poetical Translations, and Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse 
(1739). Benson also gave prizes "at all our great schools" for the best verses on 
Milton (Warton's edition of the minor poems, 1785, p. 368 n.). 

^ See below, p. 268, n. 5. ^ Nichols's Illustrations, iii. 6-7. 

* Written in the margin of page Ixxvii of the Harvard copy of the 1753 Birch-Baron 
edition of Milton's prose. On page 62 of the same book Hollis wrote, "Reader, observe, 
reverence this the genuine, full character, of the matchless John Milton!" 

* Letterto James Smith, June 11, 1787. Cf. a letter to William Nicol, June 18, 1787: 
"I have bought a pocket Milton, which I carry perpetually about with me, in order to 
study the sentiments — the dauntless magnanimity, the intrepid, unyielding inde- 
pendence, the desperate daring, and noble defiance of hardship, in that great personage, 
Satan." 

^ Preface to Prometheus Unbound. 



MILTON'S FAME 43 

pamphlets, and in such sonnets as On the New Forcers of Conscience 
and To Cromwell. With most of them Milton's words and example 
had more weight, and could be used more effectively in influencing 
others, because of his reputation for piety. Conservatives are, how- 
ever, more numerous than liberals, and some men — Warburton, 
Johnson, and Thomas Warton, for example — were prejudiced 
against the poet's character and prose writings by their dislike of 
his rehgious and political activities. "Milton's moral character as a 
member of society," said Warburton, "was certainly the most cor- 
rupt of any man's of that age"; yet in the same letter he wrote, 
"He is the author of three perfect pieces of poetry." ^ It is sur- 
prising that persons of such strong prejudices were able to retain 
their admiration or, as in Thomas Warton's case, their enthusiasm 
for the verse of a man whom as a man some of them cordially dis- 
liked. The strength of Milton's hold upon the public is shown in 
his ability to rouse the enthusiastic devotion of the radicals and at 
the same time keep the admiration of the conservatives. 

^ Undated letter to Thomas Birch, Europ. Mag., xi. 439 (1787). 



CHAPTER II 

BLANK VERSE AND RIME 

" This neglect then of rime," we read in the note prefixed to Paradise 
Lost, ". . . is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of 
ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem." It was this manifestation 
of Milton's passion for freedom that attracted far the most attention 
in the eighteenth century. To us blank verse is an old story, we ac- 
cept it without question and without enthusiasm; but in Pope's day 
it was a subject over which men waxed either dithyrambic or vio- 
lent. No feature of the wildness and irregularity of Paradise Lost 
was so disturbing, pleasantly or otherwise, as its verse. As the lau- 
reate Whitehead sang. 

Some hate all Rhlme ; some seriously deplore 
That Milton wants that one enchantment more.i 

One poet was moved to "disgust" by rime,^ whereas many others 
were of Johnson's opinion that blank verse "seems to be verse only 
to the eye," and "has neither the easiness of prose nor the melody of 
numbers." ^ 

As might be suspected from the Doctor's partisanship, the move- 
ment towards freedom in verse found much the same advocates and 
opponents as that towards freedom in political and religious mat- 
ters. It was the progressives or radicals against the conservatives: 
the one class, dissatisfied with the limitations of contemporary life 
and poetry, building largely upon theories and hopes, the other, in- 
trenched behind the solid accomphshments of the present and the 
immediate past, finding literature and hfe passing comfortable as 
they were; the one stressing freedom, breadth, and imaginative sug- 
gestiveness as the essentials of poetry, the other emphasizing finish, 

^ Charge to the Poets (1762), in Plays and Poems, 1774, ii. 298. 

^ Robert Andrews (or Robert Colvill?), Eidyllia (Edin., 1757), 9. As early as 1713 
"Jingle" was criticized in Tate's Monitor (no. 17, April 6-10) for "always carrying 
something of Littleness along with it." 

^ "Milton," in Lives (ed. Hill), i. 193; Johnson quotes the first phrase from a Mr. 
Locke. Aaron Hill thought blank verse fit for nothing but the brawls of "Faction": 
see the last half of his Cleon to Lycidas (Works, 2d ed., iv. 295-308), which appears to 
be the "poem in praise of blank verse" to which Joseph War ton refers in his Essay on 
Pope, 1782, ii. 192 n. (cf. Modern Language Notes, xxxvi. 247-8). 



BLANK VERSE AND RIME 45 

elegance, and intellectual keenness. Yet these classes were by no 
means sharply defined or invariably antagonistic; for Gray and 
some others who admired Milton and agreed with the liberals on 
most points were opposed to blank verse, whereas many followers of 
Pope were friendly to it. 

As to the relative popularity of blank verse and rime, the evidence 
is abundant but unfortunately conflicting. Two utterances towards 
the close of the seventeenth century indicate that unrimed poetry 
was at that time enjoying some vogue as a novelty,^ and so late as 
1764 Goldsmith wrote in the dedication to The Traveller that his 
poem had '' neither abuse, party, nor blank verse to support it." On 
the other hand, WilHam Mason was "well aware, that by choosing 
to write blank verse" in 1772 he "should not court popularity," be- 
cause he "perceived it was growing much out of vogue"; ^ and the 
Swan of Lichfield felt that she was unfashionable in thinking un- 
rimed poetry "much the superior vehicle for the effusions of gen- 
ius." ^ "It is become a fashion," affirmed W. H. Roberts in 1774, to 
think that poetry, and blank verse, are inconsistent; ^ or, as Vices- 
imus Knox, with his eye on Johnson, expressed it, "It is sufficient, 
in the idea of many, to condemn a poem, that it is written in blank 
verse." ^ Already, in 1770, the Critical Review had asserted with the 
finality which is the heritage of such publications, "That good 
rhime, where it can be properly used, is preferable to good blank 
verse, is now no longer questioned by critics of true taste." ^ Yet 

^ Samuel Woodford, in the preface to his Paraphrase upon the Canticles (1679), 
prophesied that "in the next [age], even Our now cry'd-up Blank Verse will look . . . 
unfashionable"; and Samuel Wesley, in the preface to his Lije of our Lord (1693), said 
that he was "of a different opinion from most others" in not liking blank verse. 

^ Preface to his English Garden, in Works (1811), i. 206. The preface was written in 
1782. 

^ Letters, ii. 237 (Feb. 7, 1789). 

* Preface to his Judah Restored. 

^ "On the Prevailing Taste in Poetry" (Essays, 2d ed., 1779, no. 127). William 
Benson, who admired Milton as strongly as he disliked blank verse (see pp. 41-2 above), 
said that, if Paradise Lost had been in rime, "upon the whole it would have been a more 
agreeable Poem to the Generality of Readers" {Letters concerning Poetical Translations, 
1739, p. 61); but I have found no one who agreed with him except Samuel Woodford 
(see above, p. 12, n. 4), and Thomas Shipman, who declared ("To Roger L'Estrange," 
Henry III of France, 1678, prefatory), "Miltons Paradice is a work noble, strong and 
fanciful, but had his humour of contradiction soften'd it into his own sweet Rhime, 
what a Poem had it been!" 

^ xxix. 435 (misunderstood by Good, p. 230). Yet in 1800 the same review said that 
a translator of Lucretius "perhaps would have acted more wisely in employing blank 
verse. ... It is more tractable in the discussion of philosophical subjects," declared 
the reviewer, "and admits a greater variety and beauty of cadence" (new arr., xxviii. 
260). 



46 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

these opinions really represent little more than the prejudices of in- 
dividuals or the attitude of a small circle; for, judging by them 
alone, one would conclude that blank verse was popular in the late 
seventeenth century and lost ground steadily in the eighteenth, 
whereas the reverse is obviously the truth. Such remarks do, how- 
ever, confirm the impression, received from other sources, that the 
general public preferred rime, a preference further indicated by the 
publication of five rimed paraphrases of parts of Paradise Lost, and 
by versions of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Blair's Grave "reduced to 
couplets." Yet here also there is evidence on the other side, for in 
1774 the first canto of the Faerie Queene was "attempted in blank 
verse," and within ten years was repubhshed with the next three 
cantos.^ Undoubtedly, however, most readers liked rime, as they do 
to-day, — no one writes advertisements in blank verse, — and, 
other things being equal, preferred rimed poetry. 

But other things were not equal, they seldom are. Augustan 
poetry, and in particular that composed in couplets, had never been 
really popular, and by the time Pope ceased writing the men who 
reached the people and affected hterature vitally were making Httle 
use of it. On the other hand, after the first quarter of the century 
the poems most widely and enthusiastically read were those in blank 
verse. Not until Scott and Byron swept the public off its feet did 
any rimed work of length gain a hold upon the people equal to that 
of The Seasons, Night Thoughts, The Grave, Pleasures of Imagination, 
and The Task? These, with Paradise Lost, were the poems most 
read; obviously, then, it is only when a critic restricts himself to 
such Hterature as seems to him most significant that he can speak of 
the heroic couplet as "the normal and habitual form in which poetry, 

1 Furthermore, all of James Hervey's prose "Meditations and Contemplations" and 
one of Young's "moral contemplations " were published in blank verse by Thomas 
Newcomb between 1757 and 1764; and the same service was done for Elizabeth 
Rowe's Devout Exercises of the Heart by Edward Smyth in 1800 (?) and for Ossian by 
Anthony Davidson in 181 2(?). 

2 In the eighteenth century The Seasons was probably more popular than any other 
poem; and The Grave (1743), which reached a so-called sixteenth edition in 1786, was 
reprinted, alone or in collections, at least twenty-nine times more by 1825. Somervile's 
Chace (1735, twelve editions by 1800) and Glover's Leonidas (1737, eleven editions by 
1810) were also among the more widely-read poems of the time. It was these works 
that the Eclectic Review had in mind when, in commenting on Sir William Drummond's 
expectation that his Odin (1817) would fail because he had written in blank verse, it 
remarked confidently, at a time when everybody was reading Scott and Byron: "It 
would, however, be paying the public taste a bad compliment, to imagine that it can 
prefer the jingling and Hudibrastic rhymes in which our poetical romances, or romantic 
poems, have been lately written, to that stately and varied march of rhythm, in which 
our language peculiarly finds itself at ease, and which has been chosen by all our fimest 
poets, as the fittest mode of expressing their feelings" (new series, 1817, viii. 85). 



BLANK VERSE AND RIME 47 

except on the stage, moved in its serious moments." ^ For the un- 
rimed poems were not only very popular but very numerous. The 
first half of the eighteenth century saw some 350, and the next 
fifty years more than twice as many, not a few being works of con- 
siderable length. Nor were they limited to forgotten versifiers, for 
practically every poet of importance from Pope's time to the present 
has written at least one piece of blank verse. As far as the general 
public was concerned, the situation was accordingly paradoxical: 
rime was preferred, but the popular poems were those that did not 
use it. 

It is only natural to suppose that such of the principal critics and 
poets of the time as did not favor blank verse were, both in theory 
and in practice, more strongly opposed to it than were "the gen- 
eral." Certainly they would be repelled, as the ordinary reader was 
not, by the crudity and roughness of contemporary efforts in the 
measure, many of which were distinguishable from prose only by the 
capitals at the beginning of the hues. We know there were not a 
few who would have exclaimed with Dr. Johnson, "When was blank 
verse without pedantry? "^ and many who shared the opinion of 

Robert Lloyd, 

Take it for granted, 'tis by those 
Milton's the model mostly chose, 
Who can't write verse, and won't write prose.^ 

Fastidious writers like Pope and Gray, antagonized by the slovenly 
and unmelodious imitations of Paradise Lost, naturally concluded, as 
Henry Neele did a hundred years later, that blank verse was another 
bow of Ulysses, "an instrument which few know how to touch." * 
ReaHzation of the difficulties of the measure came late, however. 
Adam Smith expressed the common opinion when he sneered, "Even 
I, who never could find a single rhime in my Hfe, could make blank 
verse as fast as I could speak." ^ But, whether they thought it diffi- 
cult or easy to compose, men of taste were not attracted by the gen- 
eral run of pieces written in it by their contemporaries. 

1 Gosse, Eighteenth Century Literature, 1889, p. 2 (Good, pp. 20-21). 

2 " Akenside," in Lives (ed. Hill), iii. 418. 

^ To . . . about to publish a Volume of Miscellanies (w. i7S5). in Poetical Works 
(1774), i. 106. By those who 'choose Milton as a model' Lloyd seems to mean nothing 
more than those who write blank verse. Cf . p. 78 below. 

* Neele's Lectures on English Poetry, in Literary Remains (N. Y., 1829), 126. Cf. 
Crit. Rev., 1780, 1. 50 ("Blank verse is a weapon which none but the generals in our 
language are able to wield"); Mo. Rev., enl. ed., 1796, xxi. 337 ("To the solemn and 
dignified tone of blank verse masters only are equal"; see also ib. xxii. 86); Drake's 
Literary Hours, 3d ed., 1804, i. 49-50. 

^ Bee, 1791, iii. 5; see also p. 50, n. 3, below. 



48 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Yet to blank verse in the abstract, or when handled by a master, 
they seem to have been well enough disposed. They could hardly 
have been insensible to the argument contained in the oft-repeated 
reminder that Greek and Roman poetry was unrimed, — another in- 
stance, it should be observed, of the way in which Milton's resem- 
blances to classical writers gained him admirers. But a greater 
factor in the popularizing of blank verse was probably the very 
dominance of rime. Tyranny breeds revolt, and, as the years 
passed, more and more necks were galled by the yoke of the couplet. 
Even had there been no great unrimed poetry a reaction must in- 
evitably have set in, but its advance was hastened, and made more 
conscious and intelligent, by the vogue of Paradise Lost} Criticize 
its verse as they might, if people continued to read and to like the 
poem they were bound in time to feel the beauty of its freer, more 
varied measures, as well as the prosodical poverty of their own versi- 
fication; and when these things were once realized the rigidity as 
well as the preeminence of the heroic couplet was doomed. It was 
the men of finer ear, usually the better poets, critics, and writers on 
prosody, who first became conscious of the deficiencies of neo-classic 
versification; they had given the most thought to the matter and by 
writing and reading many thousands of couplets had come to weary 
of them. This is why such leaders of rimed poetry as Dryden, Pope, 
and Prior evinced dissatisfaction with it at a time when their follow- 
ers, the ordinary readers, versifiers, and critics, still remained with 
deaf and dogged complacency in the rut. For in literature, as in 
clothes, the leaders are giving over a style just when the rank and 
file have come to adopt it. The heroic couplet probably reached its 
widest popularity in the years when most poets worthy of the name 
were turning to other measures. That men of discernment were sup- 
posed, at least by some writers, to be admirers of blank verse is 
shown by a poem published in 1733, in which the devotees of "rime 
and rime only" are classed with those who admired Blackmore's 
epics and preferred Cibber to Pope. Their opinions are ridiculed in 
this fashion: 

Verse without rhyme I never could endure, 
Uncouth in numbers, and in sense obscure. 
To him as Nature, when he ceas'd to see, 
Milton's an universal Blank to me. 
Confirm 'd and settled by the Nations voice, 
Rhyme is the poet's pride, and peoples choice. . . . 

^ Nothing is here said about Shakespeare, for dramatic blank verse, as will be shown 
later, was regarded as quite distinct from non-dramatic. Even Dr. Johnson's play was 
unrimed. 



BLANK VERSE AND RIME 49 

Thompson, write blank; but know that for that reason, 
These Hnes shall live, when thine are out of season. 
Rhyme binds and beautifies the Poet's lays. 
As London Ladies owe their shape to stays.^ 

The truth seems to be, therefore, that the general public favored 
rime but more often read the poems that were without it, whereas 
more discriminating persons, though well disposed towards blank 
verse at its best, were disturbed by the crudities of the works written 
in it; that during the first part of the century blank verse had the 
advantage of novelty, but after 1 745 the leaders of the newer move- 
ment in poetry, Gray, Collins, the Wartons, and the rest, made little 
use of it, although after 1726 it always had the great advantage of 
being employed in the poems most read by all classes, Paradise Lost, 
The Seasons, Night Thoughts, and The Task. 

The obvious fact that rime is better adapted to some purposes and 
blank verse to others was soon realized by all save extremists. "In 
English Poetry," wrote John Armstrong, "I question whether it is 
possible, with any Success, to write Odes, Epistles, Elegies, Pastorals 
or Satires, without Rhime; " ^ and with this opinion, as well as with 
that of W. H. Roberts, who wished to banish rime entirely from 
epic, dramatic, and didactic poetry ,3 most persons would apparently 
have agreed. By universal accord, too, blank verse soon came to be 
the recognized medium for religious works, and, notwithstanding the 
vogue of Pope's Homer, for translations of the classics.* It was also 
much used in meditative and philosophical poems, and, owing to the 
popularity of The Seasons, it became the usual vehicle for long de- 
scriptions of nature. 

Thus it was that rime came to be excluded to a great extent from 
long, serious poems, and in this way tended to lose the admiration 
and even the respect of many thoughtful readers. By the more 
ardent champions of blank verse it was regarded as a somewhat 
trivial and childish ornament suited only to hght songs, satires, and 
occasional pieces. Such poems "it raises . . . ," said Young, "but 
sinks the great; as spangles adorn children, but expose men." ^ 
Hugh Blair, in his pleasantly conventional and hence widely popular 
Lectures on Rhetoric, agrees with " those who think that Rhyme finds 

^ James Bramston, The Man of Taste, 7-8. The entire poem is ironical. 

2 Sketches (1758), 33. 

^ Preface to his Judah Restored (1774). 

* Even Pope and Parnell had to defend themselves for using rime in their translations 
of Homer: see p. 118, n. i, below, and Parnell's preface to his Homer's Battle of the 
Frogs and Mice (171 7), sign. A 4. 

^ Conjectures on Original Composition (2d ed., 1759), 84. 



50 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

its proper place in the middle, but not in the higher regions of 
Poetry." ^ There seem to have been many such, particularly in 
Scotland; for two other leading critics north of the Tweed, Lord 
Kames and Lord Monboddo, who agreed on little else, united in con- 
demning rime. *' Sportive love, mirth, gaiety, humour, and ridicule," 
said the former, "are the province of rhyme. The boundaries . . . 
were extended in barbarous and illiterate ages . . . but taste . . . 
improves daily; and . . . rhyme . . . will in time be forc'd to 
abandon its unjust conquests." ^ Monboddo regarded the " trouble- 
some bondage " as '* no more than a barbarous ornament." ^ Thomas 
Twining gave expression to a widespread sentiment when he wrote, 
"To me, a work of length in the rhymed heroic of Pope, etc., is in- 
sufferably monotonous and cloying to the ear;" ^ and towards the 
close of the century William Belsham spoke of the couplet as "un- 
able ... to stand the comparison with blank verse," which "of all 
the different kinds of verse known in English poetry ... is un- 
doubtedly entitled to be first mentioned as first in dignity and im- 
portance." ^ As these are not the prejudiced utterances of partisan 
poets, but the carefully-weighed conclusions of scholars, several of 

1 Lecture xxxviii (printed 1783, but first delivered c. 1760). Blair thought rime 
"unfavourable to the sublime, or to the highly pathetic strain. An Epic Poem, or a 
Tragedy," he said, "would be fettered and degraded by it." 

^ Elements 0} Criticism (6th ed., Edin., 1785), ii. 176, and cf. 160-63. 

* Origin and Progress of Language (Edin., 1774), ii. 386. On the other hand, Adam 
Smith, another of the Edinburgh group, "had an invincible contempt and aversion for 
blank verse, Milton's always excepted" {Bee, 1791, iii. 5, and cf. p. 47 above). John- 
son, on learning how Smith felt, exclaimed, "Had I known that he loved rhyme as 
much as you tell me he does, I should have hugged him" (Boswell's Johnson, ed. Hill, 
i. 427-8). 

* Country Clergyman oj the Eighteenth Century (1882), 120 (letter to his brother, 
^^y 3, 1784). In 1752 the Monthly Review (vii. 140), declared: "Blank verse is the 
proper cloathing of the sublime ... it seems limited and confined if ornamented with 
this jingle. The battles of gods and speeches of heroes are nobly suited to this form of 
expression; and as they do not want the gaudy furniture of rhime, their splendour is in 
some degree eclipsed by it. It is, on the contrary, just otherwise in subjects in them- 
selves low and mean; which require all the graces and ornaments which can be thrown 
upon them." Again, in 1758 (xviii. 277), it expresses a similar conviction: "Where the 
subject of a Poem is extensive, and lofty in its nature, or where the greater passions, as 
Terror, and Pity, are to be excited . . . Rhime may, with great propriety, be dis- 
pensed with." Cf. John Armstrong {Sketches, 1758, p. 33), "Blank verse . . . is . . . 
fittest for works of any considerable Length"; an anonymous writer in the Bee, xvi. 
272 (Aug. 21, 1793), who regarded it "as the only species of verse, which in our language 
is suited to works of considerable length;" and Robert Lloyd {On Rhyme, in Poetical 
Works, 1774, ii. 114), 

But tho' each couplet has its strength, 
It palls in works of epic length. 

^ Essays (2d ed., 1799), ii. 500, 495. The first edition (1789) says substantially the 
same thing. 



BLANK VERSE AND RIME 5 1 

whom were men of wide influence, critical opinion appears in this 
classical century to have been more partial to the use of blank verse 
for long poems than it is in ours. 

At times the partiaHty seemed Ukely to be carried farther still, for 
there were not a few who agreed with Gildon that *'rhime is injuri- 
ous . . . even in the shorter poems." ^ Milton himself may have 
been their warrant for this view, since in his own sweeping con- 
demnation of "the jinghng sound of like endings" he declared "the 
troublesome and modern bondage of riming" to be "no necessary 
adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works 
especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched 
matter and lame metre. . . . some both Itahan and Spanish poets of 
prime note," he adds, "have rejected rime both in longer and shorter 
works . . . as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no 
true musical delight." Echoes of this preface to Paradise Lost, or 
direct quotations from it, appear so frequently throughout the cen- 
tury as to indicate that it had considerable influence and was 
adopted literally and in full by many. The idea that rime was un- 
necessary even for the most airy or trivial pieces not only was ac- 
cepted but was put into practice. One bard composed several odes, 
a monody, and a tale in unrimed octosyllabic and pentameter lines,^ 
and others wrote sonnets, Pindaric odes, and stanzas in blank verse.^ 
Lyrics without rime — usually, like Colhns's exquisite Ode to Evening, 
in the meter of Milton's translation of Horace's ode to Pyrrha — 
were not uncommon after 1 740.'* 

Critics and writers on prosody also assailed rime. John Mason, 

^ Laws of Poetry (1721), 69. Cf. the Examen Miscellaneum (1702, attributed to 
Gildon) , the preface to which is interesting because the poems that follow it are pseudo- 
classic productions by such men as the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Rochester, and 
Waller. The editor, who quotes from MUton's attack on rime, holds the "boldness" of 
using blank verse to be "something necessary in order to reform our vitiated Tast of 
Poetry, which often palates wretched Stuff dress'd up in Rhime, that it wou'd nauseate 
if depriv'd of the jingle; which once laid aside, the true Beauties of Poetry wou'd be 
more our Study." The Vision, one of the poems in the volume, employs "that false 
jingling Chime" until the Muse appears and throws aside "barbarous Rhime" (p. 51, 
first pagination). 

^ Robert Andrews (or Robert Colvill?), Eidyllia (Edin., 1757). 

' See Thomas Fletcher's Eternity {Poems, 1692, pp. 53-63); James Ralph's Mtises 
Address to the King (1728," a Pindaric ode in blank verse ") ; Paul Rolli's Works, consist- 
ing of Odes in Blank Verse, etc. (1735); Roger Comberbach's Translation of an Ode of 
Horace (1754 or 1755); Joseph Strutt's Elegiac Poem in different Measures, mthout 
Rhime (1779) ; also below, pp. 560-65, and, for blank-verse sonnets, Bibl. IV, bef. 1715 
(Monck), 1767 (Downman, Huddesford), 1774 (Dunster), 1777 (Polwhele), 1778 
("Gentleman of Oxford"), 1784 (Tytler), 1787 (Whitehouse), c. 1790 (Drake), 1802 
(White). 

* For poems in the unrimed stanza of Milton's translation, see Bibl. Ill C. 



52 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

minister, teacher of elocution, and able writer on verse, regarded it 
as "one of the lowest Ornaments and greatest Shackles in modern 
poesy;" ^ and Johnson's critic, Robert Potter, wrote, *' Rhyme . . . 
has, after I have been reading blank verse, appeared to me trifling, 
tinkling, and childish . . . and must, I think, in every kind of writ- 
ing have such an effect on manly ears accustomed to the dignity of 
blank verse. . . . Rhymes and point are fit only for children." ^ 
Strangely enough, some of the rimesters themselves shared these ex- 
treme opinions. As early as 1691 one wished that he had ''broken 
a barbarous custom and freed [himself] from the troublesome and 
modern bondage of Rhiming;" ^ while another, in 1775, expressed 
the belief that "Rhyme rather debases and enervates than gives any 
real beauty and strength to a Poem. This Tyranny of Rhyme . . . 
hath been the cause of many, not inconsiderable, errors." ^ 

But it were a weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable task to try to 
register all the assaults made upon "jingle" in the century supposed 
to be devoted to it. One more, however, deserves to be noticed, the 
Conjectures on Original Composition (1759), which is the more inter- 
esting because its author also wrote the Night Thoughts and in his 
satires and his Two Epistles to Mr. Pope had shown no small skill in 
handling the heroic couplet. In this work of his old age Young de- 
nounced rimes as "childish shackles, and tinkling sounds," declaring 
blank verse to be "verse unfallen, uncurst; verse reclaim'd, rein- 
thron'd in the true language of the gods; " Pope, he asserted, had done 
Homer an "ignoble wrong" by the '^effeminate decoration" of rime; 
it was as if he had "put Achilles in petticoats a second time." "Must 
rhyme then, say you, be banished?" he queried; "I wish the nature 
of our language could bear its intire expulsion ; but our lesser poetry 
stands in need of a toleration for it." ^ 

It may be urged, on the other side, that Dr. Johnson and others 
were as violently opposed to blank verse as these men were to rime; 
but such was not the case. There were almost none who denied that 
the freer measures were better adapted to the stage and, in the hands 
of a master, to a few of the more lofty types of poetry. Even the 

1 Essay on the Power of Numbers (1749), 13-14. 

2 Art of Criticism (1789), 15-16, 203. 

^ William Wollaston, The Design of Ecclesiastes, preface. 

* The anonymous author of Bath and it's Environs, pp. vi-vii. Cf. also Edmund 
Smith's Poem on the Death of John Philips (1708?), 2, 5-7; Lady Mary Montagu's 
Court of Dulness; and Ashley Cowper's Poetical Epistle to Daniel Wr-y {Norfolk Poetical 
Miscellany, 1744, i. 166-70; noted by Good, p. 71). 

^ Second ed. (1759), 58-60, 84. Mr. Good (pp. 65, 90, 93, 160-66, 202-7, 230-35, 
etc.) quotes many other eighteenth-century utterances regarding rime and blank verse, 
and as many more of equal interest might be gathered. 



BLANK VERSE AND RIME 53 

most dogmatic assertion we have met with as to the superiority of 
rime is qualified by the clause, " where it can be properly used " ; and 
Johnson himself did not wish Paradise Lost changed.^ 

The quarrel between rime and blank verse was long, inconclusive, 
and apparently futile. Scarcely any of the eighteenth-century dis- 
cussions of the subject have, for a modern reader, any value save the 
historical; and, as neither side triumphed or suffered defeat, though 
each had to give up certain untenable positions, the whole contro- 
versy might seem to have been to no purpose. Yet in reaUty it was 
profitable, for it was a campaign of education. Few may have been 
convinced by the arguments of their opponents, but the discussion 
was provocative of thought and in the end all were the wiser, for 
each side came to a better understanding not simply of the meter it 
opposed but of the one it favored. The greatest accomplishment 
was, indeed, a gradual clarifying of ideas in regard to prosody, a 
bringing to the consciousness of both readers and versifiers the exist- 
ence of problems, difficulties, and possibilities that few had realized 
at the beginning of the century. 

^ See p. 45 above; and "Milton," in Johnson's Lives (ed. Hill), i. 194. 



CHAPTER III 

PROSODY AND DICTION 

"The poets from Dryden to Johnson," writes Mr. Saintsbury, 
"knocked a real sense of regular rhythm into the English head." ^ 
Some of the poets and theorists of this period, and many in that 
which followed, were also knocking into their own and other Enghsh 
heads a sense of irregular rhythm, a realization, to quote the same 
authority, of "the transcendental union of order and freedom" 
which makes the versification of Shakespeare and Milton what it is.^ 
The undertaking has proved to be an exceedingly difficult one, so 
much so that there are thousands of English heads into which the 
idea has not yet penetrated. Besides such minor tasks as reviving 
the lost art of the lyric and remodelling the sonnet, to the eighteenth 
century was given the work of adapting the cathedral harmonies of 
Milton's organ and the crack of Pope's whip-lash to the music of 
everyday life. Is it any wonder that it staggered and often fell under 
the load? 

So little, however, do we understand the difficulties of others, so 
slow are we to reaUze that the heights on which we were born were 
achieved by our forefathers only after long and painful struggles, 
that to some the eighteenth century may seem to have had a light 
burden, a simple, definite task which any one with a fair amount of 
insight and poetical power could have accompHshed easily enough. 
Most of us see no reason why the blank verse of the Idylls of the King 
and the couplets of Endymion should not have been written by 
Thomson or Pope. As Mr. Saintsbury puts it, "Few people . . . 
understand what English prosody really is; how entirely it differs 
from that of every other known language as a result of its blended 
character; and how very long and difficult the evolution of the new 
compound was." ^ It seems incredible that for many years most 

1 Peace of the Augustans (1916), loi; cf. History of English Prosody (1908), ii. 458-9. 

^ Peace of the Augustans, loi. 

^ lb. What is said about prosody in the pages that follow owes much to T. S. 
Omond's English Metrists in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (1907) and to 
Saintsbury's English Prosody. Yet I have depended primarily, not upon these two 
works or similar studies, but upon the poetry and remarks on versification by eight- 
eenth-century writers. 



PROSODY 55 

poets did not realize what constitutes blank verse, "the only dif- 
ference" between their rimed and unrimed work being, in the words 
of one of them, " that the rhjone is wanting; while the verse is con- 
stituted in such a manner, that the ear has a right to expect it." ^ 
Poets and critics of eminence were alike unconscious, or but vaguely- 
conscious, that there should be any other difference. The unrimed 
translations of Roscommon and Addison and the Irene of Johnson 
betray no knowledge of other requisites,^ and as late as 1778 a poet 
and essayist of James Beattie's rank assumed that by changing one 
riming word in each couplet Pope's Homer could be made into blank 
verse !^ According to Bysshe, "Blank verse is where the Measure is 
exactly kept without Rhyme," * and by "measure" he meant the 
strictest neo-classic versification. Many writers published as "imi- 
tations of Milton" productions that show no traces of the prosody of 
Paradise Lost but are either unrimed couplets or prose cut into ten- 
foot lengths; while others, dissatisfied with these pieces but failing 
to see where the fault lay, adopted, on the "safety first" principle, 
all the distinctive features of the epic, — its style, diction, prosody, 
and phrasing. 

Furthermore, "the sense of regular rhythm" was so effectively 
"knocked into the Enghsh head" that scarcely any other rhythm 
could get in, with the result that the introduction of hypermetrical 
syllables (trisyllabic feet) , the inversion or slighting of stresses, and 
the shifting of the pause to all parts of the Hne, features which are 
the soul of beauty in verse, came to seem inharmonious, as indeed 
they were frequently declared to be. Even poets who were willing to 
follow Milton slavishly did not often succeed in maintaining through 
many successive lines the fundamental feature of his prosody, the 
substitution of the free musical paragraph for the line as the unit of 
verse. They had been writing separate fines so long that they could 
not rid themselves of the habit. In truth, harmony was confined 
within narrow bounds in the days when laws for Hterature were laid 
down by ponderous lawyers, lexicographers, and divines, — heavy 
eaters and drinkers and men of excellent sense in the main, but with 
little feehng for music or for elusive lyric graces. Instead of "piping 

1 W. H. Roberts, Judah Restored (1774), p. xx. 

2 Nor does James Ralph's unrimed Night (1728), though blank verse receives high 
praise in the preface. 

' Essays on Poetry and Music, 382. Samuel Woodford, in the preface to his Para- 
phrase upon the Canticles (1679), printed as poetry a passage from the Animadversions 
upon the Remonstrants Defence, and asked if it were not as much blank verse as 
Paradise Lost was. 

* Art of English Poetry (4th ed., 1710), 35, first pagination. 



S6 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

down the valleys wild," the devotees of unshorn Apollo clicked their 
high heels on a narrow, straight cement walk, on either side of which 
bristled a tall hedge of thorn. They occasionally broke through the 
barriers and wandered for a time in the green pastures that lay be- 
yond, but in the main they kept much to the path in which they ex- 
pected and were expected to walk. How narrow this path was and 
how thick the "dont's" bristled on the hedge, we who live in days 
when poetry seems to have no laws at all can hardly realize. Even 
Pope was not strict enough to please the self-constituted authorities, 
who paid little heed to the irregularities actually existing in poetry, 
but spun their rules, as the spider does his web, out of their own 
inner consciousness. 

These men thought poorly of stanzas of "intermixed rhyme" like 
the Spenserian, and, for serious poetry, of practically all verse except 
the octo- and the deca-syllabic. They brought all hypermetrical 
syllables into line by elisions like "t' admire" and contractions like 
"vi'let" and "fab'lous"; "lovest," they said, must in verse be 
"lov'st"; the "ill-sounding Gaping call'd . . . Hiatus^'' they con- 
demned even in such expressions as "thy lambicks," and decreed 
that the e in "the" should always be dropped before a following 
vowel. ^ The cesural pause, all agreed, should come near the middle 
of the line, never after the first, second, eighth, or ninth syllable, and 
there should be another pause at the close of the line. Inversion of 
accent (the substitution of a trochaic for an iambic foot) was allowed 
unwillingly and only to a limited extent, even in blank verse. Glover 
is said to have prided himself on having none at all throughout the 
weary length of his popular unrimed Leonidas; ^ and Pemberton, 
who commended this monotony, "corrected" the trochaic lines that 
he quoted from Paradise Lost.^ "Heroick measure," according to 
Dr. Johnson, is "pure . . . when the accent rests upon every second 
syllable through the whole line. . . . The repetition of this sound or 
percussion at equal times, is the most complete harmony of which a 
single verse is capable." On this account the Doctor pronounced 
some of Milton's finest lines "remarkably unharmonious " ; yet, be- 
cause of the difficulty and monotony of the "pure measure," he was 
forced to admit the "mixed," in which," as he explained, "some 
variation of the accents is allowed . . . though it always injures the 

* Bysshe, Art of English Poetry (1710), 10-13, first pagination. 

' Saintsbury, English Prosody, ii. 493-4; cf. Chalmers, English Poets, xvii. 11. 

^ Observations on Poetry (1738), 130-34. On page 131 he writes, "The emphasis or 
accent falling upon the foremost of the two syllables in any foot, except the first, . . . 
or two syllables placed together in the same foot, which must both of necessity be pro- 
nounced short, will certainly destroy the harmony of the verse." 



PROSODY 57 

harmony of the line considered by itself." ^ William Mitford, the his- 
torian of Greece and also one of the best eighteenth-century proso- 
dists, declared that inversions were rarely found in the third and 
fourth feet, even more rarely in the second, and never in the fifth; 
the one in the second foot of the line "Of man's first disobedience" 
he thought might be "pleasing perhaps to some . . . and not to 
all." ^ "The English heroic [meter] requires the fourth syllable to 
be emphatic, and the two concluding feet to be perfect iambics," af- 
firmed the Monthly Review.^ Even Isaac Watts, who invoked the 
"Adventurous Muse " and lauded Milton as " our DeUverer from the 
Bondage," was unwilUng to accept all the liberty allowed him. 
"Scarce any other place in the verse," he wrote, "besides the first 
and the third, will well endure a trochee, without endangering the 
harmony, spoiHng the cadence of the verse, and offending the ear." 
To be sure, Milton "has not been so nice an observer of this matter; 
but it is granted, even by his admirers, that his numbers are not 
always so accurate and tuneful as they should be." Watts also 
agreed to the generally-accepted rule that "a line should never end 
with a word which is so closely connected in grammar with the word 
following, that it requires a continued voice to unite them; therefore 
an adjective ought scarce ever to be divided from its substantive." 
One line in ten, he held, should end with a full pause; accordingly he 
censured Milton for his "unreasonable run of the sense out of one 
Une into another," as a result of which "it becomes hardly possible 
for the ear to distinguish all the ends and beginnings of his verses," * 
a comment which shows that Watts wished each line to be distinct, 
as in the heroic couplet. The frequent omission of the initial unac- s^ 
cented foot, which gives much of the charm to Allegro and Penseroso, \ 
was, in the opinion of Goldsmith, Pemberton, and Scott of Amwell, 
"displeasing to a nice ear"; and the poet's ear was frankly pro- 
nounced "bad" by his romantically-inclined editor and imitator, 
Thomas Warton.^ Is it any wonder, then, that "a Gentleman of 

^ Rambler, no. 86. Johnson's Irene, which is in unrimed couplets, probably repre- 
sents his conception of blank verse. 

2 Inquiry into the Principles of Harmony in Language (ad ed., 1804), 108, 101-2. 

^ Enlarged ed., xxiv. 56 (1797). 

* Horae Lyricae (2d ed., 1709), preface, p. xx; Miscellaneous Thoughts, 1734, nos. 
Ixxii-lxxiii (Works, 1810, iv. 618-22). 

^ Goldsmith, Beauties of English Poesy (1767), i. 39; Pemberton, Observations on 
Poetry (1738), 114 n.; Scott, Critical Essays (1785), 97; Warton's edition of Milton's 
minor poems (1785), 207 (it is significant that the remark does not appear in the second 
edition). In the preface to the 1809 edition of Horae Lyricae Watts declared: "Some 
of his [Milton's] Numbers seem too harsh and uneasy. I could never believe that 
Roughness and Obscurity added any thing to the true Grandeur of a Poem." 



58 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Oxford" "corrected and harmonized" the "measure and versifica- 
tion" of Paradise Lost,^ that Pope did the same with Shakespeare's 
plays, and that such a metrical masterpiece as the Spenserian stanza 
found almost no admirers? 

These narrow and unyielding conceptions of prosody were, as has 
been said, well-nigh universal even among writers of blank verse and 
admirers of Milton. Nor were they held modestly as mere opinions 
or as records of the prevailing practice : they were thought to be as 
certain as truth itself, as changeless as right and wrong. "The fore- 
going Rules," wrote Bysshe, "ought indispensibly to be foUow'd 
. . . the Observation of them . . . will produce Harmony; the 
Neglect of them Harshness and Discord." ^ But the rules were not 
only inflexible and often wrong: they were also harmful in the de- 
finiteness and minuteness of their regulations. Even if they had in 
the main been sound they would have crushed all the freedom and 
life out of poetry; for to say that a pause or an inversion of accent 
can come only in a certain part of a line, or that an adjective cannot 
end a line if its noun immediately follows, is to take the charm and 
individuahty from versification and leave it purely mechanical.' 
That is exactly what Cowper and others accused Pope of having 
done: 

But he (his musical finesse was such, 

So nice his ear, so delicate his touch) 

Made poetry a mere mechanic art, 

And every warbler has his tune by heart.'* 

"Did he not," asks Henry Headley, "stretch his prerogative too 
far, by reducing them [poetical numbers] to perfect mechanism? of 
rhyme has he not made a rattle, and of verse a play-thing?" * 

^ See p. 35, n. 2, above. 

* Art of English Poetry (4th ed., 1710), 5, first pagination. 

^ To use Mr. Saintsbury's admirable simile, "The Popian line is indeed so thor- 
oughly 'standardised' — its parts are, like those of a cheap watch, made so perfectly 
interchangeable, that in its mere prosodic influence there is hardly any secret effect left 
possible {English Prosody, ii. 457). 

* Cowper, Table Talk, 652-5. 

^ Select Beauties of Ancient English Poetry (1787), introd., p. xxi. A more just state- 
ment is that of the Critical Review (1788, Ixv. 51) : "Perhaps, the example of Pope has 
produced an effect on our poetry, similar to that of Titian in the province of painting. 
Both were men of undoubted genius, and both possessed the higher excellencies of their 
art in an eminent degree: but their followers, who had neither so much imagination nor 
judgment, were captivated with that softness and harmony of colouring, which strikes 
the observer at first sight; and without giving themselves time to distinguish nobler 
beauties, made that the immediate object of their pursuit, which is at best but a second- 
ary qualification. The taste, however, of the age is at length gradually recovering itself 
from this extreme of vicious refinement . . . [and is returning to] the grander and 
more simple style of Spenser and Milton." 



PROSODY 59 

Yet it is doing Pope the flattering injustice of exaggerating his in- 
fluence to attribute to him all or even the major part of the "stand- 
ardization" of verse. Bysshe's book, which was pubHshed before 
the "wicked wasp of Twickenham" had shown his sting, and which 
formulated the belief held by most persons in the century following 
Milton's death, was far more mechanical and rigid than Pope's 
practice. The little bard was simply the supreme manifestation of 
a movement that was flourishing vigorously before his birth. If we 
are to understand the eighteenth century, we must realize that the 
neo-classic conception of harmony in versification was not the 
theory of a few prosodists or the practice of a few poets, but some- 
thing which in the course of several generations had penetrated so 
deep into the very blood of Englishmen that they not only believed 
but felt it; we must see that they had become so accustomed to the 
regular beat of the heroic couplet that anything else seemed to most 
of them as dissonant and crude as Wagner and Whitman at first ap- 
peared to the Victorians. Like the Philipinos, to whom the tom, 
tom, tom of a drum is music and the mingling and contrasting har- 
monies of a symphony orchestra are discords, many neo-classicists 
agreed with Johnson in finding " the most complete" if not the only 
prosodical harmony in "the repetition of this . . . percussion at 
equal times." They had grown so accustomed to scanning with 
their fingers, like schoolboys, to stressing every other syllable and 
pausing at the end of every line, that Milton's free musical para- 
graphs naturally left them bewildered and out of breath.^ 

Persons were not all of the same mind, however, in 1721 any more 
than in 192 1. In Pope's day there were not a few, as we have seen, 
who chafed under the rules and wearied of the monotony, "the 
brisk insufiiciency and commonness," of the heroic couplet. Not 
only is evidence of this to be found in the increased popularity of 
blank verse and of the lithe, informal octosyllabic (the favorite 
meter of Prior and Swift), but there are also frank expressions of dis- 
satisfaction with the neo-classic prosody. One of the earUer and 
more interesting of these is in the preface to Prior's Solomon (1718), 
where we read: "Heroic [measure] with continued Rhime, as Donne 
and his Contemporaries used it, carrying the Sense of one Verse 
most commonly into another, was found too dissolute and wild, and 
came very often too near Prose. As Davenant and Waller corrected, 
and Dryden perfected it; It is too Confined: It cuts off the Sense at 
the end of every first Line, . . . produces too frequent an Identity 
in the Sound, and brings every Couplet to the Point of an Epigram. 

^ Cf. Isaac Watts, quoted below, p. 103. 



6o THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

. . . And as it tires the Writer while he composes, it must do the 
same to the Reader while he repeats; especially in a Poem of any 
considerable length. . . . He that writes in Rhimes, dances in Fet- 
ters." Blackmore, the author of thousands of couplets, urged run- 
over lines and varied pauses "to avoid Monotony and Uniformity in 
finishing the Sense, and giving a Rest at the End of every Couplet, 
which is tedious and ungrateful to the Reader." ^ Dryden was still 
alive when the complaint was made that the critics "allow none but 
Iambics, which must by an identity of sound bring a very unpleasing 
satiety upon the Reader. ... A great many rough Cadencies, that 
are to be found in . . . the admirable Paradise Lost,''' continues the 
anonymous writer, "are so far from Faults that they are Beauties, 
and contribute by their variety to the prolonging the pleasure of the 
Readers." ^ Pope had not yet published a poem when Isaac Watts 
asserted, "It degrades the Excellency of the best Versification when 
the Lines run on by Couplets, twenty together, just in the same 
Pace and with the same Pauses. . . . the Reader is tir'd with the 
tedious Uniformity, or charm'd to sleep with the unmanly Softness 
of the Numbers, and the perpetual Chime of even Cadences." ^ The 
idea of Bysshe and other "popular versifiers," that "the chief excel- 
lence of poetry" lies in rime and a "flowing smoothness of verse 
which is now very common," was scouted by Charles Gildon, who 
held that " a verse composed of five /aw5/c5 . . . must want, by the 
uniformity of cadence, that variety that produces . . . harmony 
. . . and therefore Dryden and Milton, the greatest masters of Eng- 
lish versification, have frequently given us two or three short quanti- 
ties together." ^ 

But the spread of the rebellion against prosodic regularity is too 
large a subject to be followed adequately here. Two utterances of 
unusual interest may, however, be noted. The first is a remark by 
Gray (who named Milton as "the best example of an exquisite ear" 
he could produce), that "the more we attend to the composition of 
Milton's harmony, the more we shall be sensible how he loved to 
vary his pauses, his measures, and his feet, which gives that enchant- 
ing air of freedom and wildness to his versification." ^ Daniel Webb, 

1 "Essay upon Epick Poetry," Essays upon Several Subjects (1716), 112. 

^ Poems on Affairs of State (1697), preface. 

^ Preface to the 1709 edition of Horae Lyricae, p. xx; cf. his Miscellaneous Thoughts 
(1734), no. Ixxiii. 

* Laws of Poetry (1721), 63; cf. his Complete Art of Poetry (1718), i. 292-302. 

^ Observations on English Metre, in Works (ed. Mitford), v. 233. This was said 
apropos of Allegro. Cf. John Foster's Essay on Accent and Quantity (2d ed., Eton, 
1763), 67-8: "There is indeed no kind or degree of harmony, of which our language is 



PROSODY 6 1 

though forgotten to-day, made considerable impression upon his own 
age and is still worth reading because of the vigor of his repeated at- 
tacks upon the orthodox prosody. "Of all the modes of versifica- 
tion," he writes, "... the Latin distich, and modern couplet are the 
greatest levellers. There is no liberty, no continuance in their 
movements." ^ "The perpetual returns of similar impressions," he 
declares elsewhere, "lie like weights upon our spirits, and oppress the 
imagination. Strong passions, the warm effusions of the soul, were 
never destined to creep through monotonous parallels; they call for 
a more liberal rhythmus; for movements, not balanced by rule, but 
measured by sentiment, and flowing in ever new yet musical propor- 
tions." Webb objected to the regularity of Pope's pauses, and 
praised the beauty of "those sudden breaks or transitions in . . . 
verse." He quoted from the Essay on Man, with the comment, 
"Every ear must feel the ill effect of the monotony in these hues;" 
and in criticising Addison's Cato he explained, "The monotony of 
the couplet does not proceed, as has been imagined, from the repeti- 
tion of the rhymes, but from a sameness in the movement of the 
verse. . . . Mr. Addison, accustomed to the secure Monotony of 
the couplet, had neither the genius to bear him thro', nor courage to 
attempt the unbounded variety of the Miltonic measures." ^ 

There is danger that we may think of these men, and of other 
objectors to neo-classic regularity, as champions of the fullest pro- 
sodic freedom, a conclusion by no means justified. In literary as 
in religious evolution, there are always those who think themselves 
emancipated and who do favor great liberty up to a certain point; but 
beyond that point their minds close and prejudice and convention- 
ality reign. Isaac Watts, who on the same page in which he rejoiced 
in deliverance from the bondage of rime proceeded to forge new fet- 
ters, is an illustration of these half-liberated minds; and so is Wil- 
liam Benson, who, though he regarded the varying of the pause as 
"the Soul of all Versification" and approved of inversion of accent, 
was yet strongly opposed to blank verse.^ Nevertheless, even if 

capable, which may not be found in numberless instances thro' Milton's writings; the 
excellency of whose ear seems to have been equal to that of his imagination and learn- 
ing." "No Poet modern or antient more consulted Harmony," affirmed Hesiod Cooke 
(Proposals for Perfecting the English Language, 1729, in Original Poems, 1742, p. 305). 

' Remarks on the Beauties of Poetry (1762), 18-19. 

» Observations on Poetry and Music (1769), 113; Remarks, etc. (1762), 6, 20, 7, 12-13. 
According to Omond (English Metrists, 31-2), "Webb's ideas seemed upsetting to his 
contemporaries. . . . The frequent references to his books show that they made their 
mark on men's minds." 

» Letters concerning Poetical Translations (i739)> 39i 45. 5°. 72, 78-80. See also the 
opinions of Mitford, Goldsmith, Scott, and Warton, on p. S7 above. 



62 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

there were few who either understood or desired the full freedom 
offered them in Lycidas or Paradise Lost, many poets, like most 
writers on versification, feeling the limitations of the heroic couplet 
and of the orthodox ideas of prosody, strove for greater liberty and 
variety. 

But, some one asks, if these men liked both rime and freedom, 
why did they not unite the two in a more supple, flowing pentameter 
couplet? Rime does not necessarily imply end-stopped lines, with a 
pause near the middle and alternate accents : why not combine Mil- 
ton with Pope? The answer is probably threefold. In the first 
place, most writers of that day never thought of combining the two. 
The eighteenth century was far less eclectic than the twentieth, less 
likely to take one thing from one poet and another from another. 
Miltonic blank verse, for example, was not used in plays or Shake- 
spearean in poems; the off-hand style and easy versification of 
Eudibras were frequently imitated in Butler's own meter, but never, 
so far as I know, in decasyllabics. When Scott of Amwell wrote de- 
scriptions of nature in heroic couplets, he took Pope's Windsor 
Forest as his model; when he treated similar themes in blank verse 
he followed Thomson. 

In the second place, most eighteenth-century writers lacked the 
skill to transfer the Miltonic prosody — which few of them really 
understood — to the couplet. To us this seems easy enough to do, 
because it has been done for over a century; but if Thomson, 
Glover, and the rest could hardly keep their blank verse from slip- 
ping back into unrimed couplets, they certainly could not have 
achieved the prosody of Paradise Lost when bound by the fetters 
of rime. The experiment was made, but — here is the third part of 
the answer to our question — the results did not please. Isaac 
Watts "attempted in Rhime the same variety of Cadence, Comma, 
and Period, which Blank Verse Glories in as its peculiar Elegance," ^ 
but the world was not interested in his experiments or in any similar 
ones. Richard Blackmore, *'the knight of the burning pestle," held 
that " the Poet should often run the Second Line into the Third, and 
after the manner of the Latines, and Milton, make the Stop in the 
Beginning or Middle of it; this will vary the Sound . . . [and] re- 
lieve the Ear." ^ But there were few who agreed with him. The 
feeling of the eighteenth century about the matter was expressed by 
a thoughtful critic in the Monthly Review: " In verse where there are 
rhimes, we naturally expect the pause at the end of the hne ; when it 

' Preface to Horae Lyricae (1706). See below, p. 103. 
' "Essay upon Epick Poetry," Essays (1716), 112. 



DICTION 63 

chances to fall otherwise, the injudicious reader destroys it, and con- 
founds the sentence, by adhering to the jingle; while the reader of 
more taste sacrifices the rhime to preserve the pause. It is evident 
they are things quite contrary to one another, and incompatible. 
The writer therefore who determines on rhime, must be so far a slave 
to it, as to fetter himself to a sameness of cadence." ^ Even Cowper, 
who understood prosody as few others of his time did, said that the 
"breaks and pauses" of blank verse "are graces to which rhyme is 
not competent; so broken, it loses all its music; of which any person 
may convince himself by reading a page only of any of our poets 
anterior to Denham, Waller and Dryden." ^ 

But to this as to almost every form of prosodic narrowness Mil- 
ton's influence was ultimately opposed. As the appreciation of his 
art grew and ears became accustomed to his constantly -varying ca- 
dences, his " transcendental union of order and freedom," these qual- 
ities came to be demanded in rimed as well as in blank verse. The 
end-stopped couplet had to "grow or go," and under the influence of 
the "mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies" and his followers it 
grew until it was transformed. Indeed, the deeper we look into the 
subject the more are we inclined to agree "with its historian : 

He [Milton] is one of the very greatest facts of English prosodic history 
... he supplies infallibly, though no doubt undesignedly, all or almost 
all that is necessary to correct the faults of that time. . . . Moreover, he 
does something for English prosody at large which had to be done at 
some time. . . . His blank- verse paragraph, and his audacious and vic- 
torious attempt to combine blanks and rhymed verse with paragraphic 
effect in Lycidas, lay down indestructible models and patterns of English 
verse-rhythm, as distinguished from the narrower and more strait-laced 
forms of English metre. ... It was long before it [' the doctrine and the 
secret of Milton '] was understood — it is not universally understood or 
recognised even now. But it was always there; and as enjoyment and 
admiration of the results spread and abode, there was ever the greater 
chance of the principle being discovered, the greater certainty of its being 
put into perhaps unconscious operation by imitation.' 

The diction of the neo-classicists was, both in theory and in prac- 
tice, almost as restricted as their prosody. We constantly meet the 
same adjectives attached to the same nouns and followed by the 
same verbs, a uniformity that was due partly to the narrow field to 
which poetry had confined itself, but oftener to mere convention- 
ality. The adjectives, which are particularly stereotyped, seem 

1 vii. 139-41 (1752). * Preface to his Homer. 

3 Saintsbury, English Prosody, ii. 355-6. 



64 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

commonly to be introduced simply to fill out the lines. Truth, pro- 
priety, precision, and inevitability were the most that was sought 
for in the selection of words. The reader is rarely "stung with the 
splendor" of an unexpected word, and color and imaginative sug- 
gestiveness in diction were so long ignored that the language of 
poetry became as thin as it was sharp. 

As a result of this and other causes, many words frequently em- 
ployed by Milton and the Elizabethans had dropped so completely 
not only from poetry but from all other usage that their meaning 
was no longer understood. No criticism of Spenser and Milton was 
so often made as that of employing unusual and obsolete words,^ and 
unquestionably such words did furnish the most serious hindrance to 
the understanding and enjoyment of these poets. Yet this very 
strangeness of diction fascinated as well as repelled, and was often a 
source of subconscious pleasure to many who sensed only annoy- 
ance; it was, indeed, another element in that wildness which formed 
an important part of Milton's attractiveness. We feel it much less 
than the Augustans did, because, owing largely to the reading of 
Shakespeare, Milton, and Spenser for the past two hundred years, 
our vocabulary has come to be far richer than theirs and actually 
nearer to that of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1742, 
for example. Gray mentions ''beverage," "mood," "array," "way- 
ward," and " smouldring " as obsolete words in Dryden.^ About the 
same time Peck names among Milton's "old" words "minstrelsy," 
"murky," "carol," "chaunt," and among his 'naturalized' Latin 
words "humid," "orient," "hostil," "facil," "fervid," "jubilant," 
"ire," "bland," "reluctant," "palpable," "fragil," and "ornate." ^ 
"Self-same" and "hue" seem to have been rare;* and in 1778 
"bridal," "gleam," "hurl," "plod," "ruthless," "wail," "way- 
ward," and "woo" were declared to be "now almost peculiar to 
poetry," though "once no doubt in common use." ^ 
That most of Milton's admirers found his "quaint Uncouthness 

^ Leonard Welsted, for instance, in his Dissertation concerning the Perfection of the 
English Language, 1724 {Works, 1787, p. 123), speaks of "an uncouth unnatural jargon, 
like the phrase and style of Milton, which is a second Babel, or confusion of all lan- 
guages; a fault that can never be enough regretted in that immortal Poet, and which 
if he had wanted, he had perhaps wanted a Superior"; and the great lexicographer, 
who rejoiced in his own sesquipedalian locutions, says that Milton "wrote no lan- 
guage" but "a Babylonish Dialect" {Lives, ed. Hill, i. 190-1; Johnson borrows these 
phrases). Cf. Isaac Watts's criticism, p. 103 below. 

^ Letter to Richard West, April 8(?), 1742. 

^ New Memoirs of Milton (1740), 107, iio-iii. 

* John Scott, Critical Essays (1785), 63; Mo. Rev., enl. ed., x. 276 (1793). 

^ James Beattie, Essays on Poetry and Music, 237; see also p. 116 below. 



DICTION 65 

of Speech" pleasing is proved by the frequency with which they 
copied his diction in their own poems. "In order to write like 
Milton," it was said, "little more is required than to select certain 
peculiar, now exploded, words ... as nathless, caitiff, erst, ken, gov- 
ernance, (fee." ^ "Without abundance of such words as these [dulcet, 
gelid, umbrageous, redolent], a friend of Pope's wrote satirically, "a 
poem will never be esteemed truly Miltonic." ^ Yet Pope himself 
confessed to making use of the diction of Paradise Lost in his Homer, 
and he might well have extended his confession to include the other 
poems in which he borrowed from the 1645 volume.^ The truth is 
that poets who really admired Milton could hardly help feeUng, as 
they read his richly-colored Hnes, the tameness, the dearth of pic- 
turesqueness and individuahty, of their own language. Nor was it 
the epic alone that impressed them as unusual in diction; for the 
vocabulary of the minor poems was in a different way quite as unlike 
their own, and from the time of Pope's earhest pieces left an unmis- 
takable mark on Enghsh verse. So frequent, indeed, are the echoes 
of Milton's minor poems in the work of the Wartons and Mason that 
at times one can hear Uttle else. As a result, the criticism most often 
made of these men, as of Gray, ColUns, the sonneteers, and most of 
the poets of the lyric awakening that began about 1740, was con- 
cerning their use of "obsolete words out of Spenser and Milton." 

It is no mere coincidence that the men who turned from satire, 
wit, and the artificial pastoral to the lyric and the poetry of real na- 
ture were the men who were seeking for fresher and less hackneyed 
words. A new art requires new tools as well as a new spirit. Not 
that all artists are at first conscious of this requirement. Many poets 
employed Milton's diction, as they did his style and meters, from 
the habit of slavish imitation so general in the eighteenth century; 
yet if they had taste and penetration they realized as soon as they 
donned the new garment how drab and shabby the old one had been. 
The debt to Milton and Spenser was, of course, not limited to bits of 
gold lace or embroidery clearly taken from their gorgeous vest- 
ments. When a man who has always worn the Quaker costume 
adopts a colored tie or a derby hat, the step to a striped suit and 
pointed shoes is an easy one; and, similarly, when a writer or a 
reader has once become accustomed to unusual phraseology, he is 
likely to develop a sensitiveness to the imaginative and sonorous 

1 Mo. Rev., xii. 159 (1755). 

* Grub-Street Journal, Feb. 5, 1730 {Memoirs of the Society of Grub-Street, no. 5). Cf. 
the Guardian, no. 78 (by Pope); and James Ralph's Night (1728), p. vii. 
^ See below, pp. 1 15-16, and Appendix A. 



(£ THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

value of language, and to seek increasingly for an expression of his 
meaning which will be not only adequate but picturesque, haunting, 
magic, exquisite, magnificent, or otherwise memorable. English 
poetry from Pope to Keats shows a steadily-increasing attention to 
the connotative, the imaginative and poetic, value of words, a change 
that is due largely to the influence of Spenser, Shakespeare, and 
Milton.^ 

It would, however, be misleading to represent Milton's influence 
upon diction as entirely beneficial. The strongly Latinic, learned, 
and grandiloquent vocabulary of his epic, though admirably adapted 
to Pandemonic councils and the rebelHon of archangels, was a dan- 
gerous model for mediocre bards who were dealing with prosaic 
themes. Unfortunately, also, the most influential of his early fol- 
lowers exaggerated his lofty and unusual Latinisms, or at least did 
not modify them when dealing with very different subject-matter. 
As a result, bombast and blank verse became almost synonymous, 
and most renouncers of rime made themselves ridiculous in their at- 
tempts to walk upon stilts.^ Nor can it be denied that Thomas 
Warton and some of the other imitators of the minor poems often 
showed less poetic discrimination than boyish delight over a new toy, 
m their use of pj^^^^^ ^j^^^ ^.^^ ^^^ g^^g ^^^y. 

Uncouth words in disarray, 
Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, 
Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.^ 

1 Since Spenser was read less than the other two poets and seemed more antiquated 
and remote, his diction was used more consciously than theirs, by fewer writers, and in 
more definite imitations of his manner. Shakespeare's language seems to have at- 
tracted a still smaller degree of attention and, until the beginning of the nineteenth 
century, to have had less influence than one would expect. Yet no one can speak with 
anything like certainty in these matters until extensive researches have been made 
into the entire subject of poetic diction, a neglected field in which the many recent 
concordances are of invaluable service. 

^ The Monthly Review, for example, maintained in 1804 (enl. ed., xliv. 428, 425)that 
"blank verse requires a certain majesty of diction, and is debased by low and vulgar 
expressions," and that "'incomprehensible' is not a word so proper for this measure 
[the Spenserian stanza] as for Miltonic blank verse." "I am no great friend to blank- 
verse for subjects which are to be treated of with simplicity," Fox wrote Wordsworth 
(May 25, 1801, Harper's Wordsworth, i. 418). And so late as 1810 Chalmers {English 
Poets, xvii. 12) regarded words like "forestall, uncomfortable, acquiescence, obtuse, 
exemplified, meritorious, absurdity, superfluous, timber, assiduity, elegantly, authori- 
tative, supercede, convalescence, circumscription," as " too familiar" for an unrimed 
epic. Yet Lord Lyttelton rejoiced in Glover's discovery that "hard Words, and 
affected Phrases, are no more necessary in this sort of Metre [blank verse], than in 
Rhime, and that if Milton himself had been more sparing of them, he would not . . . 
have spoil'd the Style of so many of his Successors, who have chose to imitate him 
chiefly in this Point" (Common Sense, April 9, 1737). 

^ Johnson, quoted in Boswell's Johnson (ed. Hill), iii. 158 n. 



DICTION 67 

Milton's numerous followers in the sonnet were, indeed, widely and 
justly criticized for what Coleridge termed " their quaint phrases, and 
incongruous mixture of obsolete and Spenserian words," ^ language 
which undoubtedly injured the popularity of the genre. 

An especially undesirable feature of this tumid diction was the use 
of periphrases, such as "glossy kind" or "plumy race" for "birds," 
or "the sable rock inflammable" for "coal," or "frequent the gelid 
cistern" for "take a cold bath." These objectionable and often ab- 
surd circumlocutions were generally admired and used, by writers 
of blank verse in particular. Indirectly they owed much to Milton, 
not because he was addicted to them himself, but because his fol- 
lowers employed them in the hope of capturing the sonorous gran- 
deur and aloofness from common things to which his epic owes much 
of its beauty. The influence of Paradise Lost was unquestionably 
away from simple directness and towards the high-sounding and the 
elaborate. Yet the relish for inflated Latinisms and periphrases 
which Milton's usage fostered, if it did not originate, would never 
have fastened itself upon poetry if there had not been in the air a 
genuine and general love of grandiloquence, a love which is plainly 
revealed in the Swan of Lichfield's letters and the prose of Johnson, 
Burke, and Gibbon. 

Still another force that made strongly for unnaturalness of diction 
was the constant dread of being prosaic.^ Nothing shows the un- 
poetic nature of the eighteenth century more clearly than this fear, 
which, based as it was on the realization that there was no essential 
difference between the prose and much of the verse of the period, led 
to the creation of mechanical and adventitious differences. In con- 
sequence, writers who had courage to give up the most obvious of 

^ " Introduction to the Sonnets," Poems, 2d ed. , 1 797, p. 73. Cf . Crit. Rev. , new arr. , 
xxi. 151 (1797), where contemporary sonnets were assailed for not using "the genuine 
language of simple . . . nature." 

^ Parnell asked (in a dialogue prefixed to his Homer's Battle of the Frogs and Mice, 
1 71 7, A 4) if a blank-verse translation of Homer would be "remov'd enough from 
Prose, without greater Inconveniences "; and Alexander Kellet wrote in 1778 (see 
Crit. Rev., xlvi. 457), "In an age of ignorance an expedient turned up, that so obviously 
distinguished prose and poetry, as to lay claim for a time to constitute the essential of 
the last; and this was the Gothic invention of rhyme." The general understanding of 
the matter was voiced in the preface to James Buchanan's First Six Books of P. L. 
(Edin., 1773, p. 4), where we read, "Rhime, without any other assistance, throws the 
language off from prose; but, in blank verse, the poet is' obliged to use inversion, as 
well as pomp of sound, and energy of expression, in order to give harmony and variety 
to his numbers, and keep his stDe from falling into the flatness of prose." The same 
idea is expressed in John Aikin's Letters on English Poetry (2d ed., 1807, p. 118), and 
in Sir William Jones's Design of an Epic Poem {Works, 1807, ii. 433). On the entire 
subject, see my Poetic Diction of the English Classicists {Kittredge Anniversary Papers, 
Boston, 1913, pp. 435-44). 



68 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON ^J 

these distinctions, rime, felt constrained to substitute for it a style 
stiffened with strange words arranged in an unusual order. The 
widespread conviction that, if an unrimed work was made suffi- 
ciently unhke prose, it would be good blank verse illustrates again 
how completely the measure was misunderstood. 

This vicious diction, "the Miltonic dialect" as it was called, is to 
be found as late as The Task (1785), and occasionally in the work of 
Tennyson's early contemporaries, or even in our own day ; ^ but its 
force was largely spent by the middle of the century. As more blank 
verse was written and read, people came to understand it better and 
to distinguish what was essential from what was peculiar to Milton; 
at the same time poets were gaining greater mastery of it, making it 
more and more supple in style and natural in language, till in Tintern 
Abbey no trace of evil influence from Paradise Lost is to be found. 
Yet Milton had by no means ceased to affect the language of poets. 
Wordsworth quoted his practice as authoritative in diction, and 
often copied it, while Keats, a lover of words, appropriated not a few 
from the epic, the masque, and the monody. 

The usage of these men may well remind us that in diction, as in 
all other matters, Milton's example, notwithstanding its undesirable 
aspects, was on the side of freedom. It would certainly have grati- 
fied him to know that much of his popularity was due to the inspira- 
tion which lovers of liberty of every kind found in his life and works, 
that his influence was a potent force towards enfranchisement in 
political, religious, and literary fields. 

But any assertion as to Milton's influence must be taken partly on 
faith until more evidence for it has been offered. Even the testi- 
mony which has been presented regarding his popularity is of the 
more external sort, consisting largely in an enumeration of editions 
and in opinions and controversies about the poems. The great proof 
of his vogue, as well as of his influence, will be found in the succeed- 
ing chapters, which will trace through the poetry of the eighteenth 
and nineteenth centuries the unmistakable evidences of his style, 
diction, prosody, and subject-matter. For the closeness with which 
his various poems were copied is almost incredible: no one to-day 
would think of writing a serious poem modelled obviously and in 
detail after the Blessed Damosel or the Hound of Heaven, much less 
SiheT Allegro. But it was not so in the days of our forefathers. With 
them imitation flourished openly and universally. They Hked it, 
and referred frankly to Mason's and Warton's "imitations of Mil- 
ton" without a thought of disparagement, just as Gray compli- 

^ A familiar instance is the "reeking tube and iron shard" of Kipling's Recessional. 



IMITATION 69 

merited West on his "very picturesque, Miltonic, and musical" Ode 
to May} Reviewers referred to the "happy imitation of the Mil- 
tonic style" in Crowe's Lewesdon Hill; they were pleased with 
Drummond's Odin for its general resemblance to Paradise Lost, and 
praised Cowper as "perhaps the most successful" imitator of Mil- 
ton.^ One popular writer even maintained that imitation was a 
higher art than original writing: "'Tis easier to strike out a new 
Course of Thought, than to equal old Originals, and therefore it is 
more Honour to surpass, than to invent anew. Verrio is a great Man 
from his own Designs, but if he had attempted upon the Cartons, and 
outdone Raphael Urbin in Life and Colours, he had been acknow- 
ledged greater than that celebrated Master, but now we must think 
him less." ^ Every successful poem was imitated, — Dryden's Ode 
for St. Cecilia's Day, Pope's Dunciad, Philips's Cyder, Gray's Elegy, 
Collins's Ode to Evening, and many others; while the Faerie Queene 
alone furnished the model for hundreds of pieces. Even the greatest 
writers in some of their highest flights were clearly imitating. The 
eighteenth century produced few finer poems than Thomson's 
Castle of Indolence, yet even in language it is an imitation. William 
Mason, besides following V Allegro and II Penseroso about as closely 
as he could in his // Bellicoso and // Pacifico, wrote Musaeus, a 
Monody, in imitation of Milton's Lycidas, and apparently no one 
objected, not even his intimate friend the fastidious Gray, who re- 
vised all three poems for him.* Indeed, the detecting of imitations 
seems to have been one of the pleasures our ancestors derived from 
reading verse. 

The additional testimony of the following chapters is, however, 
not needed to show that only by gross self-righteousness and igno- 
rance can we accuse the eighteenth century of neglecting Milton. On 
the contrary, its enthusiasm for him was something that we can 
hardly understand. His life and his works furnished reading and 
topics of discussion as inexhaustible and as unescapable as the 
weather. In truth, a contemporary of Johnson or Cowper would 
have found it exceedingly difficult to avoid the poet whom he is 

^ Letter to West, May 8, 1742. 

2 See Mo. Rev., Ixxviii. 308; and below, pp. 170, 307. In 1790 the Critical Review 
(Ixix. 156) praised John Roberts's Deluge for being "no unhappy imitation of Milton's 
forcible and classic style." 

' Henry Felton, Dissertation on Reading the Classics i$th.ed.,iyss), 15-16; quoted 
in R. S. Crane's Imitation of Spenser and Milton (Univ. of North Carolina, Studies in 
Philology, 1918, XV. 195-206), where the whole subject is discussed. 

* See an undated and unaddressed letter "from Mason," in Gray's Letters (ed. 
Tovey), i. 187, n. 3; also one from Gray to Mason, June 7, 1760, ib. ii. 140, n. 5. 



JO THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

charged with slighting. If he went to the theater, he was likely to 
witness a production of Comus, or at least to pass a "busto" of the 
god in the lobby, and he might hear Sheridan recite from Paradise 
Lost; if he preferred music, there were several popular oratorios 
drawn from Milton's poems; if he fled to the "movies" of the day, 
Pandemonium confronted him; if he chose to wander through Vaux- 
hall, he passed under the "temple of Comus" and encountered a 
statue of the blind bard as II Penseroso. He went to church only 
to hear the religious epic quoted, and returned to find his children 
committing passages of it to memory. His son had probably caught 
the Mil tonic madness at college; at any rate, the "Pietas et Gratu- 
latio " volume, which the fond parent preserved in full leather 
binding because of his offspring's academic verses, contained little 
Enghsh poetry that was not Miltonic. If his friends were clergymen 
or lawyers, they were hkely to be Hterary and have ideas on blank 
verse or be writing letters to the Gentleman's Magazine on Paradise 
Lost; if they were ardent republicans, they made him listen to pas- 
sages from the Areopagitica, if dilettantes they spouted Allegro. If 
he picked up a magazine, Miltonic blank verse stared him in the 
face, and he would turn the page only to encounter Miltonic sonnets 
and octosyllabics or an essay on the indebtedness of Paradise Lost to 
the Iliad; the letters to the editor were likely to deal with some Mil- 
tonic controversy then raging, and the reviews discussed poems "in 
imitation of Milton" and editions of the poet's works. If he turned 
to books it was no better, even though he chose his reading carefully; 
for poetry, essays, biographies, volumes of letters, works on theol- 
ogy, language, and literature, were sure to quote, imitate, or discuss 
"the greatest writer the world has ever seen." 

If he fled London for Edinburgh, he ran into a "nest of ninnies" 
on the subject of Milton among both poets and critics; if he turned 
to Bath, there was Lady Miller's coterie prattling phrases from the 
minor poems, if to Lichfield, he encountered its famous Swan 

Between her white wings mantling proudly 

and rowing her state with Miltonic feet. In remote Devonshire and 
Cornwall there were Richard Polwhele and his group of sonneteers 
and scribblers of blank verse, while in remoter Wales lurked Mil- 
ton's follower John Dyer. No village was free from the contagion; 
and if he sought peace in the country, he came upon II Penseroso 
alcoves, upon travellers reading Paradise Lost by the roadside, 
ploughboys with copies of it in their pockets, and shepherds, real 
shepherds, 'poring upon it in the fields.' Even among the poor and 



MILTON'S VOGUE 71 

the uneducated it was the same : not only ploughboys and shepherds, 
but threshers, cotters, cobblers, and milkwomen read and imitated 
the poet who expected his audience to be "few." 

If he finally crossed the Channel in search of a refuge, he would do 
well to avoid Italy; for at Vallombrosa and Fiesole travellers were 
declaiming "Of man's first disobedience," and at Florence the Eng- 
lish colony was publishing volumes of patent imitations of the poet 
whom he was trying to escape. Nor would he be better ofi in other 
countries, for cultivated Frenchmen and Germans would be sure to 
speak to him of his nation's epic and its influence upon their own 
poetry, and would probably quote from Addison's critique. There 
were, of course, many parts of the continent and some remote places 
in Great Britain where Milton's voice was not heard, but the only 
EngHshmen who were certain of getting beyond its reach were the 
Alexander Selkirks lost on "some unremembered isle in far-off seas." 

Other writers may have dominated, or have seemed to dominate, 
English literature more completely than Milton did, but on closer 
scrutiny their influence will be found to have been limited to rela- 
tively short periods of time and to comparatively small, though it 
may be very important, fractions of the pubhc. More than this, 
most of them failed to rouse at the same time the profound admira- 
tion and the enthusiastic devotion which were felt for the author of 
Paradise Lost, Comus, Penseroso, and the Areopagitica. It is hardly 
an exaggeration to say that from Pope's day to Wordsworth's 
Milton occupied a place, not only in EngHsh literature but in the 
thought and Hfe of Englishmen of all classes, which no poet has held 
since and none is likely to hold again. 



PART II 
THE INFLUENCE OF PARADISE LOST 



CHAPTER IV 

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF PARADISE LOST AND 
THEIR RELATION TO EIGHTEENTH- 
CENTURY BLANK VERSE 

Blank- VERSE poems have long since become so much a matter of 
course that we accept them as we do matches, telephones, trains, or 
religious liberty, without much thought. It does not ordinarily 
occur to us that these things ever had a beginning or that they were 
once subjects of wonder, doubt, and strife. To-day, when blank 
verse is the recognized medium for long poems, the one in which 
many of the pieces we like best are written, we have difficulty in 
realizing that as late as 1785 men of the ability and position of John- 
son and Goldsmith could hardly speak about it calmly. 

But, though it is generally assumed that this kind of verse has 
always existed, the average lover of poetry would be put to it to 
name half a dozen examples that he has read which were published {^ 
before Tintern Abbey. He knows of The Seasons, The Task, Night 
Thoughts, and perhaps a few others; but he knows very little of 
them, and is obliged to confess that to him blank- verse poetry means 
the nineteenth century and Milton. Nor is this all; for of the half- 
dozen poems he can mention not one was written before Paradise 
Lost. Did Milton compose the first unrimed poem? Most of us are 
quite sure he did not; we assume that blank verse is as old as the 
couplet, which, as we know, goes back to Chaucer. When, however, 
we are asked to name some early blank verse we hesitate. A scholar 
will rememljer that Surrey's translation of parts of the Aeneid (1557) 
is supposed to be the first unrimed English poem, and he may recall 
Gascoigne's Steele Glas (1576) ; but if he can name any other blank 
verse off-hand he will do well.^ The pieces that he does remember, 
moreover, he may never have read; and even if he has gone through 
them it is unlikely that they have left any definite impression on his 
mind, — they mean little or nothing to him. In other words, there 
are few persons living to-day who really know any non-dramatic 

^ For a list of blank-verse poems published before Paradise Lost, with some account 
of them, see J. P. Collier's Poetical Decameron (1820), i. 54-8, 88-145, "• 231. 



'J^ THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

blank verse written before 1667. Paradise Lost is, to all intents and 
purposes, our earliest unrimed poem. 

If such is the case now, when the literature which flourished from 
the fourteenth century to the seventeenth has so many admirers, 
what must have been the situation in an age that was in Cimmerian 
darkness regarding nearly every English work written before its 
own time? Very few of the contemporaries of Dryden had ever read 
or even heard of any blank-verse poem in English except Paradise 
Lost; and Milton himself had written, "This neglect then of rime 
... is to be esteemed an example set, th.e first in English, of ancient 
liberty recovered to heroic poem." ^ Isaac Watts had the same idea 
in 1734, when he said, "Mr. Milton is esteemed the parent and 
author of blank verse among us;" ^ and Johnson, when writing his 
hfe of Milton forty-five years later, could remember but two un- 
rimed poems before Paradise Lost, and one of those he had only 
heard about.^ Undoubtedly the critic who wrote in 1793, "Milton 
introduced a new species of verse into the English language which he 
called blank verse," ■* expressed the all-but-universal opinion. 

But, it will be objected, these men had the drama, — Shakespeare, 
Ben Jonson, Lee, Otway, Dryden, and plenty of others; blank verse 
was perfectly famihar to them. True, blank verse was perfectly fa- 
mihar to them, and it would seem to have been a simple matter to 
transfer this verse from the plays to poems. Yet no one did it; in- 
deed, no one seems even to have thought of doing it. The fact is that 
to the eighteenth century dramatic blank verse was one thing and 
poetic blank verse an entirely different thing. Even so late as 18 14 
C. A. Elton declared, "Of blank verse there are two species. . . . 
The Epic and Dramatic measure have little more in common than 
the absence of rhyme;" * and WilHam Crowe's Treatise on English 
Versification (1827) has a chapter "Of Blank Verse" and another 
"Of Dramatic Verse." Many of the greatest and most popular 
plays of the later seventeenth century were unrimed, -^ Lee's Rival 
Queens, Mithridates, and Caesar Borgia, Otway's Orphan and Venice 
Preserved, the tragedies of Southern and Rowe, as well as Dryden's 
All for Love and most of his Spanish Friar and Don Sebastian; yet I 
have found only nine poems written between 1605 and 1700 that 

1 "The Verse," prefixed to the fifth issue of the first edition of Paradise Lost. 
The italics are mine. 

* Miscellaneous Thoughts, no. Ixxiii {Works, 1810, iv. 619). 
' Lives (ed. Hill), i. 192. 

* Bee, xvi. 272 (Aug. 21, 1793). So Thomson spoke of Philips as "the second" who 
"nobly durst" to sing "in rhyme-unfettered verse" (Autumn, 645-6). 

* Specimens of the Classic Poets, vol. i, p. xiii. 



CHARACTERISTICS OF PARADISE LOST ']'] 

follow Milton's example. Dryden, at the very time he urged aban- 
doning the couplet on the stage, apparently thought that Paradise 
Lost would be much better 'tagged.' ^ I have examined hundreds of 
blank-verse plays of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and 
have yet to find one that is at all Miltonic; but, as will be shown 
later, there are comparatively few- unrimed poems of these centuries 
that are not influenced by Paradise Lost. The dramatic blank verse 
was, so far as it was imitative at all, Shakespearean or Jonsonian,^ 
the non-dramatic was usually Miltonic. Almost the only poem that 
is likely to have derived its style and prosody from the drama is 
Blair's Grave, and this was also influenced by Paradise Lost} The 
most striking instances of the absolute separation between the two 
kinds of verse are to be found in the works of such men as Thomson, 
Glover, Mason, and Mallet, who wrote both kinds. By way of 
illustration, here is a typical passage from Glover's drama Boadicia 
(1753) and one from his epic Leonidas (1737): 

Go, and report this answer to Suetonius. 
Too long have parents sighs, the cries of orphans, 
And tears of widows, signaliz'd your sway, 
Since your ambitious Julius first advanc'd 
His murd'rous standard on our peaceful shores. 
At length unfetter'd from his patient sloth, 
The British genius lifts his pond'rous hands 
To hurl with ruin his collected wrath 
For all the wrongs, a century hath borne. 
In one black period on the Roman race.* 

He said. His seeming virtue all deceiv'd. 
The camp not long had Epialtes join'd, 
By race a Malian. Eloquent his tongue, 
But false his heart, and abject. He was skill'd 
To grace perfidious counsels, and to cloath 
In swelling phrase the baseness of his soul, 
Foul nurse of treasons. To the tents of Greece, 
Himself a Greek, a faithless spy he came. 
Soon to the friends of Xerxes he repair'd, 
The Theban chiefs, and nightly consult held.^ 

^ Aside from turning parts of it into rime in his State of Innocence and Fall of Man, 
he says in the "Essay on Satire" prefixed to his translations from Juvenal (Works, ed. 
Scott-Saintsbury, xiii. 20), "Neither will I justify Milton for his blank verse ... for 
... his own particular reason is plainly this, that rhyme was not his talent." 

2 The use of MUtonic blank verse in translations of Greek tragedies and other 
classic dramas is a not unnatural exception (see pp. 346-51 below). 

' See pp. 383-5 below. 

* Boadicia, act i. 

* Leonidas, ii. 224-33. 



78 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

If we realize that to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century 
poets blank verse in a drama was an entirely different thing from 
blank verse in a poem, and that to them there was but one unrimed 
poem, Paradise Lost, we shall better understand the powerful influ- 
ence which this work exerted. Blank verse meant verse that was 
Miltonic, and ''Miltonic verse" usually meant little more than 
blank verse. Two poems published in the London Magazine in 1 738, 
for example, are said to be "attempted in Miltonic verse," ^ which 
must mean blank verse, for the pieces have no more suggestion of 
Paradise Lost than has Addison's translation, Milton's Style Imitated, 
where the imitation is limited to the absence of rime.^ In the follow- 
ing lines by Edmund Smith "Miltonian verse" means simply blank 

verse : 

Oh! might I paint him in Miltonian verse. . . . 
But with the meaner Tribe I 'm forc'd to chime, 
And wanting Strength to rise, descend to Rhyme.' 

If a writer grew tired of the couplet or desired a freer measure, 
there was, accordingly, but one thing for him to do, — follow Para- 
dise Lost. And it is not to be wondered at that, in following his 
model, he usually copied many characteristics which were merely the 
personal pecuHarities of Milton and hence had no necessary connec- 
tion with blank verse. He did not distinguish between the two 
things. As a result, blank-verse poems usually stood by themselves, 
with their style, diction, and prosody little affected by those of 
either the drama or the couplet. This curious state of affairs led the 
same man to write Popean couplets on one day and Miltonic blank 
verse containing no suggestion of Pope on the next.^ To us such a 
complete separation is hard to understand. Why should not a poet 
merely have taken a hint from Milton and written his own blank 
verse? Why not have combined the diction of Pope with the pros- 
ody of Milton? It seems perfectly easy. But we forget that the 
truisms of to-day are the discoveries of yesterday; we forget how 
slowly and painfully the world came to ideas which we imbibed 
naturally in childhood; we forget Columbus and the egg. 

Yet even when a man did think of writing poems in blank verse of 

1 vii. 44: Hymn to the Morning and Hymn to Night. ^ See pp. 104-5 below. 

' Poem on the Death of John Philips (1708?), 2. So John Nichols {Illustrations, 1817, 
i. 664) speaks of one who "has left the Miltonic measure, and falls with graceful ease 
into rhyme." See also p. 47 above. 

* Compare, for example, Fenton's riming of the first, fourth, nineteenth, and twenti- 
eth books of Pope's Homer, with his translation of the eleventh book of the Odyssey 
"in Milton's style"; or Prior's rimed paraphrase of the thirteenth chapter of i Corin- 
thians with his unrimed version of the two hymns of Callimachus. 



CHARACTERISTICS OF PARADISE LOST 79 

his own he was unable to do it well. There were not many who tried 
it in Dryden's or Pope's day/ and those who did produced unrimed 
couplets like these: 

Unpolish'd Verses pass with many Men, 
And Roms is too Indulgent in that Point; 
But then, to write at a loose rambling rate, 
In hope the World wiU wink at all our faults. 
Is such a rash, ill-grounded confidence, 
As men may pardon, but will never praise. 
Consider well the Greek Originals, 
Read them by day, and think of them by night.^ 

If Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon, author of the famous 
Essay on Translated Verse, could do no better than this, is it any 
wonder that the ordinary, struggUng poet made no attempt to strike 
out for himself, but slavishly followed in Milton's tracks? 

To break away from Paradise Lost and yet not at the same time 
fall to the dead level of Roscommon's translation, that is, to write 
what we may think of as everyday blank verse, was a task so dif- 
ficult that EngHsh writers were one hundred and fifty years in ac- 
complishing it. One thing which held them back was their fear of 
being prosaic.^ If even at this late day we are not entirely free from 
the impression that poetry and rime are almost synonymous, how 
much more strongly must this feehng have been with those who were 
bred under the dominance of the heroic couplet. Most blank verse 
seemed hardly more Hke poetry to hundreds of the contemporaries 
of Dryden, Pope, and even Johnson than do the measures of Walt 
Whitman or Amy Lowell to many readers of to-day. Yet Milton's 
unrimed Hnes did impress nearly everybody as poetry. They were 
made so, it was commonly supposed, by certain original characteris- 
tics or devices which Hfted them above prose and separated them 
sharply from stanzaic or couplet verse. Without the stiffening of 
these characteristics, it was thought, blank verse could not stand. 
Many versifiers therefore copied them blindly, others scattered 
them through their prosaic Hnes as a cook may mix raisins and sugar 
into bread dough to make it seem like cake, and still others adopted 
them almost unconsciously. 

^ Such pieces of non-Miltonic blank verse published between 1667 and 1750 as I 
have come upon are listed in Appendix B, below. 

* Roscommon's translation, Horace's Art of Poetry (1680), p. 18. Most of Milton's 
predecessors in non-dramatic blank verse did no better; nor did Walter Pope (see 
below, p. 90, n. 3), or the "Gentleman of Oxford," whose original blank-verse "argu- 
ment" is even worse than his unrimed New Version of F. L. (cf. p. 35 above). 

3 See pp. 67-8 above. 



8o THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

To trace the influence of Paradise Lost, therefore, we have only to 
discover these outstanding characteristics which were thought to 
distinguish it aHke from other poetry and from prose, and to search 
for them in later poetry. They seem to me to fall into nine main 
classes: — ^ 

1. Dignity, reserve, and stateliness. Paradise Lost is as far 
removed from conversational familiarity in style or language as any 
poem could well be : 

Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit 
Of that forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste 
Brought death into the world, and all our woe, 
With loss of Eden, tiU one greater Man 
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, 
Sing, Heavenly Muse. 

2. The ORGAN TONE, the sonorous orotund which is always asso- 
ciated with Milton's name: ^ 

Against the throne and monarchy of God. 

Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms. 

O Prince, O Chief of many throned powers, 
That led the embattled Seraphim to war. 

thou that, with surpassing glory crown'd, 
Look'st from thy sole dominion like the god 
Of this new World.^ 

3. Inversion of the natural order of words and phrases, 
one of Milton's many Latinisms: 

Them thus employ 'd beheld 
With pity Heaven's high King. 

Ten paces huge 
He back recoil'd. 

Me, of these 
Nor skill'd nor studious, higher argxunent 
Remains.* 

^ There is a somewhat similar list in Francis Peck's New Memoirs of Milton (1740, 
pp. 105-32), a curious hodge-podge that contains a good deal of valuable information. 
A brief examination of Milton's style will be found in the Spectator, no. 285. 
2 Cf. Bowles's 

Great Milton's solemn harmonies . . . 
Their long-commingling diapason roll. 
In varied sweetness 

{Monody on Warton, 121-5); Tennyson's "God-gifted organ-voice of England" 
{Milton, 3); and Wordsworth's "Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea " 
(sonnet on Milton, 10). 

' i. 42, 49, 128-9; iv. 32-4- * V. 219-20; vi. 193-4; ix. 41-3- 



CHARACTERISTICS OF PARADISE LOST 8 1 

a. An inversion that is particularly Miltonic is the placing of a 
word between two others which depend upon it or upon which it de- 
pends, as a noun between two adjectives, a noun between two verbs, 
a verb between two nouns, etc. For example, " temperate vapours 
bland," "heavenly form Angelic," " unvoyageable gulf obscure," 
"gather'd aught of evil, or conceal'd"; 

Finn peace recover 'd soon, and wonted calm. 

Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before.^ 

4. The OMISSION OF words not necessary to the sense, one 
feature of the condensation that marks Milton's style: 

Though all our glory extinct, and happy state 
Here swallow'd up in endless misery. 

And where their weakness, how attempted best, 
By force or subtlety. 

Extended wide 
In circuit, undetermined square or round.^ 

5. Parenthesis and apposition. These two devices, similar in 
character, — since apposition is a kind of parenthesis, — were also 
probably due in a considerable degree to Milton's fondness for con- 
densed expression. Familiar examples are: 

Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams. 

Ahaz, his sottish conqueror, whom he drew. 

Their song was partial, but the harmony 
(What could it less when Spirits immortal sing?) 
Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment 
The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet 
(For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense) 
Others apart sat on a hill retired. 

Thus saying, from her side the fatal key, 
Sad instrument of all our woe, she took. 

Where eldest Night 
And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold. 

Sable-vested Night, eldest of things, 
The consort of his reign. 

The neighbouring moon 
(So caU that opposite fair star).' 

^ V. 5; ix. 457-8; X. 366; V. 207, 210; ii. 703. 

2 i. 141-2; ii. 357-8, 1047-8 

3 i. 469, 472; ii. 552-7, 871-2, 894-s, 962-3; iii. 726-7. Cf. also ii. 769, 790-91- 
921-2; iii. 372-84; iv. 321-4. 



82 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

6. The USE OF one part of speech for another. Other poets 
have resorted to this practice, but none so often as Milton.^ 

a. Sometimes a verb or an adjective is employed in a participial 
sense, as 

Yet oft his heart, divine of something ill.* 

h. Now and then an adjective is used as a verb: 

May serve to better us and worse our foes.' 

c. Occasionally a substantive is made to take the place of a verb, 
as when trees ^^ gemmed" their blossoms, or sea-monsters "tempest" 
the ocean, or Satan '^voyaged" the deep.* Participles from such 
noun-verbs appear in the expressions "fueWd entrails," "his con- 
sorted Eve," "roses bushing round." ^ 

d. More frequently verbs seem to be used as nouns, though it is 
often hard to say whether the word in question is a verb or a clipped 
form of substantive: "the great consult began"; Satan "began . . . 
his roam"; "without disturb they took alarm"; "the place of her 
retire." ^ 

e. One interchange of the parts of speech that was a favorite with 
Milton and his followers is the use of an adjective where an adverb 
would ordinarily be employed. Because of the distorted order it is 
often impossible to tell whether the word in question is intended to 
be an adjective or an adverb ; but at any rate ordinary prose usage 
would employ adverbs in such cases as these, "with gems . . . rich 
emblazed," "grinned horrible," "his grieved look he fixes sad," "his 
proud step he scornful turn'd." ^ 

/. As common, if not more so, is the use of an adjective for a noun. 
This device is sometimes very effective, the vague suggestiveness of a 
general expression being far better for Milton's purposes than the 
more definite word with its human associations would be, — when, 
for example, he speaks of chaos as "the palpable obscure" or "the 
vast abrupt," of a trumpet as "the sounding alchemy," of the sky as 
"Heaven's azure" or "the vast of Heaven." * Other instances are 
" this huge convex of fire," " dark with excessive bright," "Satan with 

' It is hard to say how much of this is due to his fondness for the shortened forms 
of words. For example, in "made so adorn iov thydeUght" (viii. 576), does he mean 
"adorned" or does he intend to use the verb as an adjective? 

'' ix. 845. 3 vi. 440. 

* vii. 325, 412; X. 471. 

* i. 234; vii. 50; ix. 426. 

6 i. 798; iv. 536-8; vi. 549; xi. 267. 
^ i. 538; ii. 846; iv. 28, 536. 

* ii. 406, 409 (cf. Raleigh's Milton 1915, pp. 228-9), S^?; i- 297; vi. 203. 



CHARACTERISTICS OF PARADISE LOST 83 

his rebellious,'' "on smooth the seal" plays, "quit The dank," "tend- 
ing to wild," "putting off Human, to put on Gods." ^ 

7. Vocabulary. Through his wide and constant reading, his 
unusual familiarity with the classics, his admiration for Chaucer and 
for Spenser, Shakespeare, and other Elizabethans, Milton had ac- 
quired an unusual vocabulary, which shows itself even in his prose 
works. In Paradise Lost he naturally made frequent use of still other 
unfamiliar words to describe the exceptional persons and places 
with which he dealt; for ordinary language is not only inadequate 
but too definite and too connotative of commonplace things to pic- 
ture archangels, chaos, hell, and heaven. These persons and places 
Milton with great art suggests to us through the atmosphere and 
sound of the poem, and in order to create this atmosphere and 
to obtain harmonies that produce this sound he had to depart from 
the ordinary vocabulary. For these reasons his diction would be 
marked in any age; but in the time of Pope and Johnson, when the 
poetic vocabulary was unusually limited and when many old words 
that are common to-day were obsolete, it must have seemed strange 
enough.^ 

The words in Paradise Lost that would have sounded unusual to 
the average intelligent reader of the late seventeenth or early eight- 
eenth century fall into four main classes, the general effect of each 
of which, it will be observed, is to give splendor, as well as a certain 
strangeness or aloofness, to the poem: 

a. Archaic words found in Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, or their 
contemporaries, but obsolete in the eighteenth century, such as 
"erst," "grunsel," "welkin," "frore," "lore," "grisly," "ken," 
"areed," "avaunt," "behests," "wons," "emprise." ^ Since, how- 
ever, any eighteenth-century writer who uses such words may have 
derived them from Spenser or Shakespeare or possibly Chaucer, they 
count for Httle in tracing Milton's influence. 

b. Unusual words from the Greek or Latin. Under this head 
Peck, in 1740, noted "dulcet," "panoplie," "sapience," "nocent," 
"congratulant," "attrite," "insanguin'd," "sequent."'' Latin 
words, whether common or uncommon, appealed strongly to Milton. 

c. Words in general use but employed by Milton in senses obso- 
lete in the eighteenth century. To such words he usually gives 

1 ii. 434; iii. 380; vi. 414 (cf. i. 71); vii'. 409, 440-1; ix. 212, 713-14. 

* We know that it did : see above, p. 64. 

3 i. 360, 460; 11.538,595,815; iii. 622; iv. 821, 962 (two); vi. 185; vii. 457; xi. 642. 

* New Memoirs of Milton, iio-iii. Cf. P.L., i. 712; vi. 527 (and 760); vii. 195; 
ix. 186; X. 458, 1073; xi. 654; xii. 165. 



84 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

the meanings they had in Latin or Anglo Saxon. For example, 
"the secret top Of Oreb" (L., retired); "a singed bottom all in- 
volved With stench" (L., wrapped in); "tempt" an abyss (L., 
attempt); "his uncouth way" (A. S.. unknown); "the buxom air" 
(A. S., yielding); "habit fit for speed succinct" (L., girt up); 
"unessential Night" (L., unsubstantial); "comes unprevented" (L., 
unanticipated); "argument" (L., theme); " sagacious oi his qusirry " 
(L., keen-scented); "turn My obvious breast" (L., in front of).^ 

d. Words required or suggested by the subject, as ambrosial, 
chaos, adamant or adamantine, ethereal, void, abyss, umbrageous, 
embattled, amarant or amaranthine.^ 

8. The introduction into a comparatively short passage of a 
CONSIDERABLE NUMBER OF PROPER NAMES that are not neccssary to 
the sense but add richness, color, and imaginative suggestiveness : 

And what resounds 
In fable or romance of Uther's son, 
Begirt with British and Armoric knights; 
And all who since, baptized or infidel, 
Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban, 
Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond; 
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore 
When Charlemain with all his peerage fell 
By Fontarabbia. 

Of Cambalu, seat of Cathaian Can, 
And Samarchand by Oxus, Temir's throne, 
To Paquin of Sinaean kings, and thence 
To Agra and Labor of Great Mogul, 
Down to the golden Chersonese, or where 
The Persian in Ecbatan sat, or since 
In Hispahan, or where the Russian Ksar 
In Mosco, or the Sultan in Bizance.^ 

9. Unusual compound epithets, formations probably borrowed 
from Homer, and much more frequent in Comus than in the later 
poems. Typical examples are "sail-broad vans," "high-climbing 
hill," "arch-chemic sun," "half-rounding guards," " night-warbUng 
bird," " love-labour'd song," " seven- times- wedded maid," "sky- 
tinctured grain," "three-bolted thunder," "Heaven-banish'd host," 

1 i. 6-7, 236-7; ii. 404-5, 407, 842; iii. 643; ii. 439; iii. 231; ix. 28; x. 281; xi. 373-4. 

2 Milton has "ambrosial" 13 times, "chaos" 25, "adamant" or "adamantine" 11, 
"ethereal" 25, "void" 15, "abyss" 19, "umbrageous" i, "embattled" 5, "amarant" 
or "amaranthine" 2. 

' i. 579-87; xi. 388-95 (this roll of names continues for sixteen more lines). Cf. 
also i. 392-521, 576-9; ix. 77-82, 505-10; X. 431-6, 695-706, etc. 



CHARACTERISTICS OF PARADISE LOST 85 

''shape star-bright," "joint-racking rheums," " double-founted 
stream." ^ 

Three other characteristics of Paradise Lost, though worth men- 
tioning because they are generally overlooked, are so common in 
earlier poetry as to be, in my opinion, of no value in determining in- 
fluence. One of them, which must have pleased Milton's ear (since 
it occurs frequently in all his poems) and which may have had some- 
thing to do with his puns,^ is the intentional repetition of a word 
or a phrase : 

And feel by turns the bitter change 
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce- 

So he with difiiculty and labour hard 
Moved on: with difficulty and labour he.' 

A second feature of Milton's style which is also to be found in the 
work of his predecessors is the use of an uninterrupted series of 
WORDS in the same construction, — participles, adjectives, verbs, 
substantives, etc.: 

Unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved. 

Exhausted, spiritless, aflBicted, fall'n. 

But apparent guUt, 
And shame, and perturbation, and despair, 
Anger, and obstinacy, and hate, and guile.* 

Such series are not frequent in Paradise Lost, however, and might be 
used independently of Milton. 

A third characteristic of Paradise Lost which might perhaps ap- 
pear in any writer whether he knew the epic or not, but which is apt 
to gives lines a Miltonic ring, is the use of adjectives in -ean or 
-ian from proper nouns. Some examples are Memphian, Ausonian, 
Atlantean, Serbonian, Cerberean, Trinacrian, Ammonian, Phil- 
istean, Cronian, Cathaian, Memnonian, Bactrian, Plutonian, 
Dictaean, Thyestean. 

^ ii. 927; iii. 546, 609; iv. 862; v. 40, 41, 223, 285; vi. 764; x. 437, 450; xi. 488; 
xii. 144. Laura E. Lockwood's Milton Lexicon (N. Y., 1907). PP- 667-71, lists all the 
words hyphenated in the original text. 

2 See, for example, iv. 181 ("at one slight bound high overleap'd all bound"), v. 
583-4 ("the empyreal host Of Angels, by imperial summons call'd"), vi. 383-4 ("to 
glory aspires. Vain-glorious"). 

3 ii. 598-9, 1021-2. Cf. also ii. 618-25; iii. 188-93, 446-8, 645-6; v. 146, 791-2; 
vi. 244-5. Ii^ iv. 639-58 and x. 1086-1104 passages of some length are repeated. 

* ii. 185 (cf. iii. 372-s, v. 898-9); vi. 852; x. 112-14. Cf. also ii. 618-28, 947-5°; 
iii. 489-93; iv. 344; V. 772; vii. 502-3. 



86 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

It is not through oversight that nothing has been said of Milton's 
prosody. Master as he was of all the resources of verse, he was less 
an innovator in "numbers" than in other things. Every important 
characteristic of his versification which is capable of being defined, 
isolated, and catalogued is to be found in the plays of Shakespeare 
and the lesser Elizabethans. Peculiarities of Paradise Lost that 
seem to be due to its prosody will, when examined more closely, be 
seen to he in other categories. True, Milton's verse is in general less 
flowing, less conversational, and more exalted than that of the dram- 
atists, but does not this difference spring from the nine quahties we 
have just been examining? The remarkable freedom, flexibility, and 
variety that characterize his prosody he secured by constantly using 
run-over lines, by moving the cesural pause from one part of the line 
to another, by inverting the metrical accent through the substitution 
of trochaic for iambic feet, by shghting one or more of the metrical 
accents in nearly every line, and by shifting the location of those he 
slighted. Yet, as all these devices are used by Shakespeare, they are 
of no assistance in tracing Milton's influence. 

The features of Paradise Lost that have been listed include by no 
means all of its characteristics, but they are all I have found to be 
useful in detecting the influence of the poem. In fact, a number of 
them are by themselves of no account. A work may be dignified and 
reserved, may contain unusual Greek or Latin words or unusual 
compound epithets and make frequent use of parentheses and ap- 
positives, and yet not be Mil tonic; but if we are sure on other 
grounds that it has been influenced by Paradise Lost the presence of 
these qualities will show the extent of the influence, and if we are 
doubtful their presence will help settle the matter. The frequency 
with which they occur is naturally an all-important matter. An oc- 
casional inversion, an adjective used now and then for an adverb or a 
noun, a few words employed in obsolete senses, these may be found 
in almost any poem and hence are of no significance. To give a piece 
the Miltonic ring they must be fairly common. 

But does the presence of these qualities, however frequently they 
occur, necessarily prove the influence of Paradise Lost ? May they 
not have been derived from other poems or have been hit upon by 
some writers quite independently? Some of them may have been, 
and are therefore, as has been said, of shght value in estabhshing in- 
fluence. A considerable number, however, — and it is upon these 
that the burden of proof rests, — cannot in the eighteenth century 
very well have been derived from any source but Paradise Lost. True, 
the same qualities may occasionally be found in the other poetry 



CHARACTERISTICS OF PARADISE LOST 87 

with which the Augustans were familiar, but they are not so com- 
mon as to make any impression or have any influence. Besides, 
since rimed and unrimed poetry were so far apart, Miltonic charac- 
teristics when they occur in blank verse were probably derived from 
blank verse, that is, from the writings of Milton or his imitators; and 
what likeher source could there be than the widely-read and univer- 
sally-admired work which every one regarded as the model for all 
unrimed poetry ? 

It must always be remembered that many earher writers who are 
familiar enough to us, poets who have furnished inspiration and 
guidance to nearly every singer from Keats to Bridges, were in the 
eighteenth century either unknown or unregarded. Aside from 
Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, most English writers be- 
fore Dryden meant little or nothing to the contemporaries of Pope 
and Johnson.^ Chaucer and Donne they knew to some extent, but 
mainly as curiosities; Ben Jonson they talked about, and Beaumont 
and Fletcher they occasionally read; but the work of none of these 
men made much impression on them, for in order to exert an influ- 
ence a poem must be both familiar and popular. Furthermore, 
much of the literature they really knew they made very Httle use of, 
for in Augustan times poetry ran in a narrow groove which few cared 
either to widen or to get out of. Writers did not seek the strange and 
unusual, they did not Uke novel effects. They had much to say of 
Homer and Pindar, but copied them very little; when it came to 
writing they followed one another or contemporary Frenchmen. 
Horace and Virgil, to be sure, they did admire and follow; but they 
did not imitate Pindar, they imitated Cowley's imitation of Pindar. 
True, during the latter half of the century interest in the life and 
literatures of earlier times and other peoples greatly increased ; yet 
even then the models upon which poetry was written remained much 
the same, — there was still the school of Pope, the school of Milton, 
the school of Spenser. The relative importance of these groups had 
changed, but there were no new names. Thomas Warton, for ex- 
ample, notwithstanding his famiharity with literature ranging from 
the twelfth century to the seventeenth, wrote verses Uttle affected 
by any one who lived in this long period except Spenser. One might 
expect to find lyrics modelled after those of Carew, Suckling, or 
Herrick, sonnets that copied those of the Elizabethans, fantastic con- 
ceits from Donne, a new Canterbury tale, a medieval debate or 
romance. Instead, we have poems usually more romantic in subject 
and treatment than those of the Augustans, but still following the 

1 See below, pp. 480-82. 



88 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

same models and still scarcely touched by any work of Shakespeare's 
contemporaries or predecessors except the Faerie Queene. 

Fortunately for our present purposes, the eighteenth-century 
writers show little of the complexity and subtlety of influence which 
mark more recent Uterature. If the broad knowledge, the eclectic 
tastes, the love of unusual effects, that belong to the nineteenth cen- 
tury had been equally characteristic t)f the eighteenth, the present 
study would have been vastly more difficult and its results far more 
vague, unsatisfactory, and inconclusive. 



CHAPTER V 

THE INFLUENCE BEFORE THOMSON, 1667-1726 

It was thirteen years after the appearance of Paradise Lost before 
the publication of another poem without rime.^ Except for being 
in blank verse, this piece gives no evidence of Milton's influence, 
but five years later, in 1685, some lines which do show it appeared 
from the same pen. Milton was fortunate in his first follower, who 
was no other than the Earl of Roscommon, nephew of the Earl of 
Strafford. Roscommon was not only a person of rank, but a poet 
highly esteemed in Augustan circles; his life was written by John- 
son and his verse appeared in all the great collections of English 
poetry pubUshed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 
His reputation, however, always rested largely upon one work, a 
poetical Essay on Translated Verse (1684). This famous piece, 
though written in couplets, contains a strong plea for discarding 
rime, and in the second edition (1685) concludes with twenty-seven 
lines in acknowledged imitation of Paradise Lost. Here are the first 
ten: 

Have we forgot how Raphaels Num'rous Prose 

Led our exalted Souls through heavenly Camps, 

And mark'd the ground where proud Apostate Thrones, 

Defy'd Jehovah! Here, 'twixt Host and Host, 

(A narrow but a dreadful Interval) 

Portentous sight! before the Cloudy van, 

Satan with vast and haughty Strides advanc'd. 

Came tow'ring arm'd in Adamant and Gold. 

There Bellowing Engines, with their fiery Tubes, 

Dispers'd Ethereal forms. 

The contents and diction of this passage were undoubtedly derived 
from Paradise Lost, but the style was not, nor was the prosody, for 
in most of the Unes one expects rime and is somewhat disturbed by 
its absence. This means that Roscommon had freed himself but 
slightly from the end-stopped Unes, the regular, equal stresses, the 
few internal pauses (and most of those near the middle of the lines) , 
which mark the heroic couplet. 

^ This work, Horace's Art of Poetry (1680), was quoted on p. 79 above. The idea 
of discarding rime was undoubtedly derived from Paradise Lost. 



90 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

On the other hand, Milton's unusual versification was what par- 
ticularly attracted one of Roscommon's contemporaries, Samuel 
Say, and led him to some unusual ideas of prosody which he exem- 
pHfied in blank-verse translations of four of Horace's epistles (1698) 
and later set forth in two essays, one On the Numbers of Paradise 
Lost} Most of Say's pieces are, like this passage, comparatively 
simple and natural in style : 

Or in some Grove retir'd 

Thou walk'st Unseen; in Contemplation high 

Rais'd up above the World, and seest beneath, 

Compassionate, the Cares and fond Designs 

Of restless Mortals, always in pursuit 

Of what they always have; stUl heaping up 

Stores to be us'd, yet never use their Stores." 

Occasionally, however, there will be a line as Miltonic as. 

But if Behind 
You loiter far, or strenuous run Before.' 

The early influence of Paradise Lost wsis, however, by no means 
limited to blank- verse poetry; it was, indeed, more obvious in the 
interminable rimed epics of Sir Richard Blackmore. Of this writer 
it may be said that few men of so little consequence have been 
abused by so many illustrious pens. Dryden, Pope, Swift, Gay, 
Garth, Sedley, Steele, and many lesser men each had his fling at the 
physician-poet, who long remained a target for the shafts of his 
literary brethren.^ As late as 1762 Robert Lloyd referred to his 

Heroic poems without number, 
Long, lifeless, leaden, lulUng lumber,* 

^ This essay, the earliest work of its kind (written in 1737), is published with one 
On the Harmony, Variety, and Power of Numbers, whether in Prose or Verse, and with 
some unrimed lyrics suggested by Milton's translations from Horace (see pp. 563-4 
below), in Poems and Two Critical Essays (written in 1698, but not printed till 1745), 
139-71, 95-136, 1-26. 

2 To Thomas Godfrey iih. 24). 

^ Epistles of Horace, i. 2 {ih. 17). It was in 1698 that the astronomer, Walter Pope, 
published his Moral and Political Fables, done into Measured Prose intermixed with 
Ryme. I have not seen the work; but, according to Mr. Saintsbury {English Prosody, 
ii. 499) , " the quality of its blank verse appears to be pretty accurately designated in the 
title," a remark that certainly applies to The Wish, which Pope issued the year before. 

* Many of these poetical tributes are quoted in Birkbeck Hill's notes to Johnson's 
life of Blackmore, or are referred to in the Dictionary of National Biography. An entire 
volume of satirical "Commendatory Verses" appeared in 1700 and was reprinted in 
1702. The most amusing of the Blackmore squibs is Gay's rimed catalog of the 
works of "England's arch-poet" {Verses under the Picture of Blackmore), which is 
erroneously included among Swift's poems (cf. Pope to Jervas, Nov. 14, 1716). 

' On Rhyme, in Poetical Works (1774), ii. 114. Cf. the elder Thomas Warton's 
Poems (1748), 20. 



BLACKMORE 91 

lines that contain more truth than satire, for Blackmore had neither 
inspiration nor taste, but jingled along with complete self-confidence 
in the monotonous jog-trot of an overworked cab-horse. He was 
capable not only of writing an epic with the title Eliza, but of putting 
into it lines like these: 

The Spaniard's Nose receiv'd the Fauch ion's Edge, 
Which did in sunder cut the rising Bridge. 
The Blood that follow'd part distain'd his Breast, 
And trickling down his Throat ran inwardly the rest.^ 

A partial excuse for such deficiencies is to be found in the circum- 
stances under which the poems were composed, their author being a 
busy, middle-aged London doctor, the physician to King William, 
with little time for literature. *'For the greatest part," so he in- 
formed his readers, his first epic "... was written in Coffee- 
houses, and in passing up and down the Streets," because he had 
"little leisure elsewhere to apply to it." ^ This work. Prince Arthur, 
an Heroick Poem in ten Books (1695), was followed by three others, 
King Arthur (1697) in twelve books, Eliza (1705) in ten, and Alfred 
(1723) in twelve, besides many pieces of a less heroic character, some 
in prose, some in verse. In the preface to King Arthur Blackmore 
terms Milton "a very Extraordinary Genius ^^ and acknowledges 
having made "a few allusions" to some of his ^'Inventions," ' — a 
very modest confession of many unmistakable plagiarisms. 

As a matter of fact, the first three epics (which differ Httle except 
in the names of the characters) are under a considerable debt to 
Paradise Lost, since they employ Satan and his followers, together 
with the archangels of heaven, for their supernatural machinery. 
The plan of each poem is much like that of the Aeneid. At the be- 
ginning, Satan, jealous of the prosperity of the hero (or the heroine), 
summons a council in hell and lays the matter before the peers. 
After various spirits have made speeches, it is agreed to send one of 
the number to stir up trouble for the principal character of the poem, 
who, however, by the aid of Uriel and other angels passes victori- 
ously through all the plots and gory battles. These councils in hell 
form the most Miltonic feature of the epics, for, although there may 
be several of them in a single poem, the characteristics of the speak- 
ers afid of their proposals are invariably taken almost without 

^ Page 106. 

^ King Arthur, p. v. 

3 lb. xiii. Blackmore praised Milton in his Nature of Man {Collection oj Poems, 1718, 
p. 193; of. Good, p. 63). His Pindaric Hymn to the Light of the World seems, particu- 
larly at the beginning, to attempt the lofty style and diction of Paradise Lost. 



92 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

change from the great assembly in Pandemonium. In Eliza, for 
example, the principal debate of the fiends proceeds as follows : 

Chemosh arose, a Prince of great Renown, 
No bolder Chief assail 'd th' Almighty's Throne; 
Scarce greater Deeds by Satan's Arms were done. 
Deform'd with Seams and Ignominious Scars, 
From ghastly Wounds receiv'd in Heav'nly Wars; 
Above the Demons that compos'd the Crowd, 
The Potentate, Majestick Ruin, stood. . . . 
He ceas'd: Then Baal did with Choler swell, 
A fiercer Spirit was not found in Hell . . . 
And thus th' Infernal Dyet he address'd. . . . 
Tho' disappointed oft, I still declare 
For bold Attempts in Arms, and glorious War. . . . 
He ceas'd, and Dagon rose, a Prince serene. 
Of Aspect mild, and of a winning Mein. . . . 
He still preserv'd a wond'rous pleasing Air, 
Graceful in Torment, in Perdition, fair. . . . 
Thus he began, Seraphs, I speak my Mind 
With Deference due to Spirits more refin'd; 
Of clearer Judgment, and of greater Weight, 
More able in the Business of the State. ... 
Why should we fruitless War and Strife repeat? 
Can all our Force Omnipotence defeat? ^ 

But these Stygian councils are only one of Blackmore's many bor- 
rowings from Milton. In King Arthur there is an account of Satan's 
flight through chaos to the earth ; ^ in Eliza the entire history of his 
revolt and of the battles in heaven is given, and there are allusions, 
in other connections, to the use of cannon in the celestial warfare and 
to the wounds inflicted by "Victorious Michael's Steel"; ^ while in 
Prince Arthur Christ appears in a triumphal chariot to end the war of 
the angels, Satan's ''faded Splendor and illustrious Scars" and the 
storm of fire that pursued him to hell are mentioned, there is another 
description of the Miltonic chaos with an account of the strife be- 
tween the atoms, a reference to angels' crowns wreathed with gold 
and amarant, and one to Sin and Death, as well as other borrow- 
ings.* Furthermore, when Blackmore deals with supernatural char- 
acters his diction is decidedly Miltonic. Empyreal, adamant, 
adamantine, massy, refulgent, cerulean, tartarean, are words that 
occur frequently, and the use of adjectives in -ean or -ian derived 

^ Pages 12-16 passim. ^ Page 150. ^ Pages 205-8, 11,2. 

* Pages s, 8 (cf. King Arthur, 152), 36-7, 43, 47. Note also page 22, where a huge 
fury suddenly contracts her size, as do the demons in Pandemonium; and page 243, 
where Satan assumes the appearance of a beautiful young angel. The names of Black- 
more's angels are taken from Paradise Lost. 



DENNIS 93 

from proper nouns becomes almost a mannerism with him. In one 
place he has six in seven lines/ and he is never long without one. 
Not only do we have Cyclopian, Herculean, Bolerian, Dobunian, 
Catuclanian, Ottadenian, Durotrigian, and hundreds more of the 
same kind, but we meet such unexpected manufactures as Vulcan- 
ian, ^tnean, Ithacian, Arragonian, Nassovian (from Nassau), 
Pightlandian, and Laplandian. Although Blackmore wrote too 
rapidly and knew too little of Paradise Lost to follow it closely,^ a 
careful reading of his works would probably reveal a number of 
verbal borrowings. The few I have noticed are dubious.^ On the 
whole, however, when it is remembered that the epics are in rime, 
that they began to appear only twenty-eight years after the publica- 
tion of Paradise Lost, and that they are anything but dignified or 
sublime in style, it will be seen that their debt to Milton is consider- 
able. 

The first great protagonist of Paradise Lost was not Addison but 
the forgotten John Dennis. As the enthusiasm which the poem 
roused in this sturdy inventor of stage thunder cropped out in all his 
critical writing, one is not surprised to find it affecting his verse. 
That it did so he was himself the first to point out; for he explained 
in the preface to his Court of Death (1695, an irregular ode on the 
death of Queen Mary), " In the writing these Pindarick Verses, I had 
still Milton in my Eye, and was resolv'd to imitate him as far as it 
could be done without receeding from Pindar's manner." The at- 
tempt to combine Milton and Pindar as models probably arose from 
Dennis's desire for sublimity, the quality in poetry that he admired 
above all others and the one for which he persistently but vainly 
strove in his own productions. As the style and prosody of Paradise 
Lost are hardly transferable to a rimed ode, he could borrow only 
words, phrases, and ideas, but all of these he took. The Court of 
Death describes a visit to the lower world and to a Stygian assembly 
much like that held in Pandemonium, over which Death, who 
shakes *'a dreadful Dart," presides.* Such expressions as "Empy- 
rean Lyre," "Adamantine Chains," "Silence was ravish'd as she 
sung," "their formidable King the great Consult began," "the 

^ King Arthur, pp. 56-7. 

2 The invention of cannon, for example, he attributes {Eliza, p. 11) to the celestial 
angels instead of to Satan's forces. 

^ "The Eternal's Co-eternal Son" (Eliza, p. 4, cf. P. L., iii. 2); the picture of God's 
throne shining "with excessive Brightness" (Prince Arthur, p. 43, cf. P. L., iii. 380); 
and the account of filling the sun, originally a "spungy globe," with light, — "The 
thirsty Orb drinks in the liquid Beams" (ib. 38, cf. P. L., vii. 361-2). 

* Section vii. 



94 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

griesly Terror spoke," "Discord . . . Thro all her thousand 
Mouths," show the debt to Milton's phrasing,^ 

"Through the reigns of William and Anne," observes Johnson, 
"no prosperous event passed undignified by poetry." ^ Dennis had 
already broken into song on three public occasions, and four others 
were to arise to call forth his efforts. Between his earlier and his 
later productions, however, there is one significant difference, — the 
earUer are pindaric odes, the later are without rime. It is convenient 
to speak of these last pieces as written in blank verse, although the 
meter of none of Dennis's work really deserves that name. Like 
Roscommon, he either disregarded or did not understand the funda- 
mental principles of Milton's prosody, and in consequence most of 
his lines are nothing but heroic couplets without the rime. It is not 
improbable, indeed, that one reason for his discarding rime was to 
save himself trouble. There seems to be nothing Miltonic about his 
earliest attempt at blank verse, The Monument (1702), in which the 
death of King William is lamented through sixty pages, or about 
his last unrimed eulogy. On the Accession of King George (1714). 
Between these panegyrics came his poems on Blenheim and Ramel- 
lies (1704, 1706), which together fill nearly one hundred and seventy 
pages with bombastic platitude, and recall Dryden's regret over 
another EngHsh victory because of the amount of bad verse it would 
call forth. In style, language, syntax, and prosody neither of these 
efforts shows much Miltonic influence, though inversions are fre- 
quent, adjectives are occasionally used for adverbs, and some un- 
usual words and borrowed phrases are to be found. ^ Few passages 
are even so much like Paradise Lost as this : 

The French were all of Gallick Troops the Flow'r, 
Experienc'd and Victorious were their Chiefs, 
Soldiers and Chiefs inur'd to vast Success: 
And claiming Right to Conquest and Renown, 

^ Sections ii, vi, ii (of. P. L.,\v. 504, and Cotnus, 557-60), v (cf. P. L., i. 798), vii (of. 
P. L., ii. 704), X (cf. P. L., ii. 967). 

2 "Prior," in Lives (ed. Hill), ii. 186. 

^ A few of his obvious borrowings from Milton are: "swinging slow with hoarse and 
sullen Roar" {Blenheim, in Works, 1718, i. 160, cf. Penseroso, 76); "Italia! Ah how 
fall'n, how chang'd from her, Who" (ib. 176, cf. P. L.,i. 84-5); "raise my advent'rous 
Song" {ib. 196; cf. P. L., i. 13); "Instruct me, Goddess, for Thou only know'st" {ib. 
196, cf. P. L.,i. 17-19); "Collected in himself, awhile he stood" {Ramellies,ib. 235, cf. 
P. L.,ix. 673); "as a Flock of tim'rous Fowl" {ib. 245, cf. P. L., vi. 856-7); "the mid- 
most Regions of the Air" {ib. 245, 256, cf. P. R., ii. 117); "the stedfast Empyrean" 
{ib. 255, cf . also 299, and P. L., vi. 833, iii. 57) ; "Down tow'rds the Earth she wheel'd 
her airy Flight" {ib. 256, cf. P. L., iii. 739-41). Four lines of Blenheim {ib. 213) are 
devoted to the praise of Milton. 



DENNIS 95 

From long Possession; with their dearest Blood 

Resolv'd their lofty Title to defend. 

By long Success presumptuous grown and vain.i 

The Battle of Ramillia not only is in blank verse but makes use of 
the Miltonic machinery. It opens with a council of infernal spirits 
summoned by Satan to his palace (hung between the moon and the 
earth) to devise means of thwarting the progress of Goodness and 
Queen Anne. The long and insulting speech of "Hell's black Ty- 
rant" is roundly answered by Discord, who offers to go to the aid of 
King Louis; her plan is accepted and the assembly dismissed. This 
gathering recalls the council in Pandemonium, but is closer to the 
one described in the second book of Paradise Regained, where the 
meeting-place is similar. Still more like Milton is the scene in 
heaven with which Dennis's fourth book opens, for here the Eternal 
Father calls the attention of the Son to the machinations of the evil 
one and sends an angel to thwart them.^ 

It is doubtful whether these poems were ever much read; cer- 
tainly they are quite unreadable to-day, — dull, tumid, false, lacking 
in grace and fluency as well as in the Augustan virtues of wit and 
finish. Yet Dennis was the most extensive writer of blank verse be- 
tween Milton and Thomson, and, with the exception of Addison, 
probably did more than any other one man to establish the reputa- 
tion of Paradise Lost. 

The councils of fallen spirits that found favor with Blackmore and 
Dennis also play an important part in two pieces which were pub- 
lished the same year, 1702, under the same name. The Vision. One 
of these is in rime till the appearance of Urania, who, casting aside 
"that isihe jingling Chime" describes an assembly in Pandemonium 
of the fallen angels mentioned in Paradise Lost, at which Behal pro- 
poses, as he does in Paradise Regained, to ruin man through lust.^ 
This Vision is anonymous, as the second might about as well be, 
for the poet's name is given as "M. Smith." The author imagines 
that he is carried through the Miltonic chaos (where he observes the 

^ Blenheim, ib. 190-91. 

' Cf. P. L., ill. 56-415, V. 219-90. The fourth and ninth books of the Gierusalemme 
Liberata, which Dennis admired, describe scenes in heaven and hell, but his work is not 
so close to them as to the similar passages in Paradise Lost. Furthermore, his diction 
when he deals with the supernatural is decidedly Miltonic. Translations from the 
Gierusalemme into Miltonic blank verse, with inversions not in the original, are intro- 
duced into his Grounds of Criticism in Poetry, 1704 {Works, ii. 436, 448-50; and compare 
the translation from Homer on 453 with P. L., vii. 410-12). 

2 Charles Gildon, Examen Miscellaneum (1702), 51 ff., first pagination; cf. P. R., ii. 
150 ff. See above, p. 51, n. i, where an attack on rime is quoted from the same volume. 



96 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

war of the atoms), past the gates of hell *'of nine-fold Adamant" 
(guarded by Sin, the 'offspring of Satan's brain'), to a great palace 
where the evil spirits are assembled. After "Silence was bid," 

The awful Monarch from his Seat did rise, 

And having roul'd about his Baleful Eyes, 

He said 

Great Princes, Virtues, Dominations, Pow'rs; 

Once Potentates of Heav'n; no longer ours: 

Such the Almighty's Thunder prov'd, unknown, 

TUl we attempted the Imperial Throne 

Of Heav'n. Tho great, yet Glorious was our Fall . . . 

But more. Ambitious Minds like mine 'twill please 

To Reign in Torment, then to serve in Ease.' 

Is it any wonder that Mr. Smith feared he should be called "a 
Plagiary, for taking some Hints from Milton"? ^ 

The first Milton enthusiast seems to have been John Philips, who 
when still a schoolboy Hked to sit and read Paradise Lost while his 
long hair was being combed.^ At Oxford he "studied" his favorite 
poet "with Application, and trac'd him in all his successful Transla- 
tions from the Ancients. There was not an Allusion in his Poem, 
drawn from the Thoughts, or Expressions of Homer or Virgil, 
which he could not immediately refer to." * The fruits of this devo- 
tion are to be seen in a parody which was published anonymously in 
1 701 with the title Imitation of Milton,^ but which four years later 
appeared over the author's name as the Splendid Shilling. This 
short piece quickly became popular and long remained so. By 1720 
it had been printed, either by itself or in miscellanies, as many as 
nine times, and had been lauded in the Tatler by Addison as "the 
finest burlesque poem in the British language." ^ Later in the cen- 
tury Goldsmith wrote of it, "This is reckoned the best parody of 
Milton in our language: it has been an hundred times imitated, 
without success." ' It was also praised by Cowper and Crabbe, and 
was twice translated into Latin.* This is the beginning: 

' Pages 23-49. The author — who proves to be the Rev. Matthew Smith, a non- 
conformist minister of Mixenden, Yorkshire — uses such words as "appetency," 
"adamantine," "lucid," "orient," "refulgent." 

2 "To the Reader." A council of devils in William Shippen's rimed Moderation 
Displayed (1704) may also owe something to Milton. 

' Diet. Nat. Biog. * Life [by George Sewell], 1712, p. 3. 

* Charles Gildon, Neiv Miscellany of Original Poems (1701), 212-21. The Imitation 
is also somewhat like Horace's second epode. 

^ No. 249, Nov. II, 1 710. 

' Beauties of English Poesy (1767), i. 255. 

8 The Task, iii. 455-6; The Borough, xi. 9. The Latin versions are Thomas Tyr- 
whitt's Splendens Solidus (in his Translations in Verse, Oxford, 1747, the text being 



PHILIPS 97 

Happy the Man, who void of Cares and Strife, 
In Silken or in Leathern Purse retains 
A Splendid ShUling; he nor hears with Pain 
New Oysters cry'd, nor sighs for chearfnl Ale; 
But with his Friends, when Night[l]y Mists arise, 
To Juniper's, or Magpye, or Town-Hall repairs. 

An idea of how Miltonic the style is may be gathered from these 
lines near the end : 

My Galligaskins that have long withstood 
The Winter's Fury, and encroaching Frosts, 
By time subdu'd, (what will not time subdue!) 
A Horrid Chasm disclose, with Orifice 
Wide, discontinuous; at which the Winds 
Eurus and Auster, and the dreadful Force 
Of Boreas, that congeals the Cronian Waves, 
Tumultuous enter with dire chiUing Blasts. 

It must not be thought that any slight upon Paradise Lost was 
intended by the parody; Philips's humor was simply the playfulness 
of an admiring friend. His attitude towards "his darling Milton" ^ 
is expressed in no uncertain terms in a later poem : 

Oh, had but He that first ennobled Song 
With holy Raptures, like his Abdiel been, 
'Mong many faithless, strictly faithful found; 
Unpity'd, he should not have wail'd his Orbs, 
That roll'd in vain to find the piercing Ray, 
And found no Dawn, by dim Suffusion veU'd! 
But He — However, let the Muse abstain. 
Nor blast his Fame, from whom she learnt to sing 
In much inferior Strains, grov'ling beneath 
Th' Olympian HiU, on Plains, and Vales intent. 
Mean Follower.'' 

All of his poems, furthermore, as he himself points out in every case 
but one, are "in imitation of Milton." ^ They include a tumid piece 
on the battle of Blenheim (1705), which is no worse than such poems 
usually are; Cerealia (1706), a Miltonic parody devoted to the 
praise of ale, which, though published anonymously and not printed 
over Philips's name until 1780, is in all probability his; * and Cyder 

almost identical with that of the Splendens Nummus in Edward Popham's Selecta 
Poemata, Bath, 1776, iii. 101-7), and an anonymous Nummus Splendidus appended to 
the Latin translation of Gray's elegy made by Christopher Anstey and W. H. Roberts 
in 1778. 

1 Sewell's Life, 3. 2 Cyder, i. 785-95- 

2 See the full titles of the Splendid Shilling and Cerealia, and the third line of Cyder. 
* John Nichols {Collection of Poems, 1780, iv. 274 n.) refers to a copy of the 1706 

edition in the Lambeth Ubrary "in which the name of Philips was inserted in the hand- 



98 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

(January, 1707/8), a georgic in two books, which treats in detail of 
the care of orchards and the making of cider.^ In style and diction 
all his works are alike, for the exaggerated Miltonisms which he in- 
troduced into the Splendid Shilling for the sake of humor Philips 
never shook off. Indeed, he probably regarded them as beauties, or 
at least as essentials to blank verse, although to the modern ear they 
make all his verse sound like parody. The following description of 
the making of cider, which is t3^ical of his principal work, will show 
how grotesque some of his "imitations" are: 

Now exhort 
Thy Hinds to exercise the pointed Steel 
On the hard Rock, and give a wheely Form 
To the expected Grinder: Now prepare 
Materials for thy Mill, a sturdy Post 
Cylindric, to support the Grinder's Weight 
Excessive, and a flexile Sallow' entrench'd. 
Rounding, capacious of the juicy Hord. 
Nor must thou not be mindful of thy Press 
Long e'er the Vintage; but with timely Care 
Shave the Goat's shaggy Beard, least thou too late 
In vain should'st seek a Strainer, to dispart 
The husky, terrene Dregs, from purer Must.'* 

Philips's debt to his "darling" was not limited to style and dic- 
tion. The opening of Cerealia is clearly based on that of Paradise 
Lost, and there are many phrases, like "buxom air," "impresses 
quaint emblazon'd," "bedropt with gold," "with speed succinct," 
and "bold emprise," taken from the same source.' In Cyder, Mil- 
tonic borrowing begins with the fourth hne and riots throughout the 
poem. Besides saying that a river "drew her humid Train," and 
speaking of the "volant Touch" of a musician and of "Pearl and 
Barbaric Gold," •* Philips introduces whole lines from Paradise Lost: 

writing of Abp. Tennison," and adds, "It was published by T. Bennet, the Bookseller 
for whom Blenheim was printed." The style, diction, and prosody are Philips's, the 
subject-matter suggests the Splendid Shilling and Cyder, and the poem reveals a 
familiarity with Milton unusual at that time. 

1 To Philips have also been attributed The Fall of Chloe's Piss-pot [Jordan], first 
printed in the London Magazine for February, 1754; and Ramelies, published anony- 
mously in 1 706 and reprinted as Philips's in Alexander Harrach's John Philips (Kreuz- 
nach, 1906, pp. 111-21). Neither piece, however, shows the prosody, the language, or 
the style of Philips. Dr. Harrach also reprints (pp. 96-110, and see 64-71) The Sylvan 
Dream, or the Mourning Muses (1701), because on the title-page of the British Museum 
copy the name "John Philips" is written. But there is no other reason (except a pos- 
sible borrowing from Comus, see below, p. 429, n. i) for thinking that this dull, conven- 
tional work, partly in heroic couplets and partly in Pindarics, is from the pen that 
wrote the Splendid Shilling and Cyder. '^ Cyder, ii. 78-90. 

3 Cf. P. L., ii. 842, v. 270; ix. 34-5; vii. 406, x. 527; iii. 643; xi. 642. 

* i. 205 (cf. P. L., vii. 306); ii. 424 (cf. P. L., xi. 561); ii. 657 (cf. P. L., ii. 4). 



PHILIPS 99 

Adventrous I presume to sing; of Verse 
Nor skill'd, nor studious. 

Till, with a writhen Mouth, and spattering Noise, 
He tastes the bitter Morsel, and rejects 
Disrelisht. 

If no Retinue ... 

Dazle the Croud, and set them all agape. 

Berries, and Sky-dy'd Plums, and what in Coat 
Rough, or soft Rind, or bearded Husk, or Shell. 

Maladies, that lead to Death's grim Cave, 
Wrought by Intemperance, joint-racking Gout, 
Intestine Stone, and pining Atrophy. ^ 

There were some who did not relish the Philipian variety of Mil- 
tonic language and style. Blackmore assailed the 'harsh numbers,' 
''uncouth Strains," and 'tortured language' of Bleinheim;^ while 
Pope declared, "Philips, in his Cyder, has succeeded extremely well 
in his imitation of it [Milton's style], but was quite wrong in en- 
deavouring to imitate it on such a subject." ' Johnson, who ad- 
mired the Splendid Shilling, wrote, "Whatever there is in Milton 
which the reader wishes away, all that is obsolete, peculiar, or licen- 
tious is accumulated with great care by Philips." ^ 

Yet such adverse judgments were rare. The poet's biographer had 
"never heard but of One" faultfinder; ^ and even Johnson inserted 
into his Hfe of Edmund Smith a quotation which speaks of Philips as 
" that second Milton, whose writings will last as long as the English 
language, generosity, and valour." ^ His acknowledged works were, 
indeed, very popular. Not only did the Splendid Shilling have an 
unusual vogue, but Bleinheim reached its sixth edition in 1720, Cyder 
its fourth in 1728, and the three together saw what was called the 
tenth edition in 1744.^ If they have not fulfilled a contemporary 

1 i. 4-5 (cf. P. L., I. 13, and ix. 41-2); i. 447-9 (cf. P. L., x. 566-9, said of eating 
fruit in each case); i. 741-4 (cf. P. Z,., v. 355-7); ii. 53-4 (cf. P. Z,., v. 341-2); ii. 471-3 
(cf. P. L.,xi. 467-88). 

2 Advice to the Poets (2d ed., 1706), 10. Note that Philips's title is Bleinheim, not 
Blenheim. 

' Spence's Anecdotes (ed. Singer, 1820), 174. 

* "Philips," in Lives (ed. Hill), i. 318. Charles Gildon declared (Laws of Poetry, 
1721, p. 321) that, except for the Splendid Shilling, Philips "never did any thing . . . 
worth looking on." 

' Sewell's Life, 27 (the one critic was Blackmore). Cyder is criticized, though per- 
haps humorously, in a passage in Gay's Wine, 1708 (lines 114-20 of the Muses' Library 
edition) , which praises Bleinheim. 

* Lives (ed. Hill), ii. 7. 

^ Some of these editions were not ehtirely new; the first issue of Cyder, for example, 
formed part of the Whole Works (1720). Within four months of the publication of 



lOO THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

prediction that they would ''live ... as long as Blenheim is re- 
member'd, or Cyder drunk in England," ^ two of them, Cyder and the 
Splendid Shilling, continued to be read at least to the end of the cen- 
tury. The Critical Review declared in 1762 that the two poems were 
"sufficient to eternize the memory" of their author;^ and on the 
appearance of The Task the Gentleman's Magazine hailed Cowper as 
"perhaps, without excepting even Philips, the most successful of the 
imitators of Milton." ^ Not only did an Italian translation of Cyder 
go through two editions (1749, 1752), but the original poem was 
edited with an imposing array of "notes provincial, historical, and 
classical" in 179 1, and as late as 1804 a critic of good standing wrote 
that it still maintained "a respectable place among compositions of 
its class." ^ This popularity makes Philips a much more important 
writer than has been realized. Although far from being a great poet, 
he was influential : to his example are to be referred most of the un- 
rimed burlesques, the technical treatises, and the humorous poems 
on liquor that were popular in the eighteenth century. Further- 
more, as the only widely-read writer of blank verse before Thomson, 
he helped to endow the new measure with what none of his contem- 
poraries were able to give it, popularity. Milton, Roscommon, and 
Dennis had gained respect for it, and lesser men had made the public 
somewhat accustomed to it, but most of their productions found few 
readers and fewer admirers. Philips did much to bring blank verse 
"out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs 
and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses," and through his 
influence on Thomson he became a figure of unquestionable signifi- 
cance in the development of English poetry. 

The blank verse produced by Daniel Defoe fell as far short of 

Cyder, Gay's imitation of it, Wine, appeared (see pp. 107-8 below); and during the 
following year, 1709, some unknown- bard put forth Milton's Sublimity asserted in a 
Poem occasioned by a late celebrated Piece entituled Cyder. This curious and confused 
production criticises Philips for debasing Milton's verse, the writer (whose sanity is 
open to question) apparently not reaUzing that, since his poem also is in Miltonic blank 
verse and his theme far from exalted, he is doing the very thing for which he blames 
Phihps. He refers in the preface to "the fam'd Author of that idoliz'd piece, Cyder," 
and adds, "I do not think there is any Work extant, that hath alarm'd the World more 
than his; and bin I may say, some years so much the talk and hopes of the Publick." 

^ Henry Felton, Dissertation on Reading the Classics (5th ed., 1753), 225. 

' xiv. 154; see also ib. xxxv. 54 (quoting from W. H. Roberts's Poetical Epistle to 
Christopher Ansley, 1773), and Mo. Rev., enl. ed., vii. 22 (1792), x. 272 (1793), xxx. 393 
(quoting from Lady Manners's Review of Poetry, 1799). Henry Baker in 1723 termed 
Philips a "celestial bard" who sang of cider "in lines immortal" {Invocation of Health, 
in Anthologia Hibernica, 1793, i. 226). 

3 Ivi. 235. 

* John Aikin, Letters on English Poetry (2d ed., 1807), 144. 



DEFOE lOI 

exemplifying that harmony for which he praised poetry ^ as his Hfe 
failed to embody the truth which he fervently invoked in song; yet 
it is of greater interest than are many more melodious productions. 
Its significance lies not so much in its author's reputation as in af- 
fording an instance of an essentially journalistic and unpoetic writer 
who, so early as 1705, admired the cathedral harmonies of blank 
verse sufficiently to imitate them to some extent, and in the fact that 
his crude poems were written not for a small circle or as a private 
experiment but for publication in a newspaper. The Review. The 
necessity of providing copy quickly for his periodical may have been 
Defoe's reason for abandoning the troublesome bondage of riming; 
for, though he sneers at those who "will miss the Jingle, and like the 
Pack-Horse that tires without his Bells, be weary of the Lines for 
Want of the Rhjone," he admits that one of his pieces, which fills 
three pages, was 'the birth of as many hours.' ^ Many of his lines 
are hardly verse at all; but it will be seen from those quoted below 
that he tried, by clipping past participles ("contaminate"), by 
using verbs for nouns ("dispose"), and particularly by inverting the 
word-order, to get something of a Miltonic effect: 

Immortal Truth, thou Counterpart of God, 
Immense, and like him Bright, tho' Undiscern'd 
Tell us, Why Mortal Frauds assault thy Throne, 
Assume thy Likness, and thy Face Sublime 
So aptly Counterfeit? Why masked they strive 
To pass for thy bright Self? How Crime and Guilt 
Of Hell conceiv'd, and from the Place Surnam'd 
Contaminate, can Heaven it self Invade. . . . 
Not high assembl'd Crowds of Tyrant Men, 
Who boast the vast Dispose of Mortal Power, 
Shall thy Unbyass'd Resolutions fright .^ 

^ See his Review, vol. iii, no. 104 (Aug. 31, 1706). It is in this connection that he 
commends MUton (see p. 15 above). 

2 lb. no. 61. The poem On the Fight at Ramellies is in the same number; the last 
sixteen lines of it are rimed. 

' Hymn to Truth, in the Review, vol. ii, no. i (Feb. 27, 1705). See also the lines in 
Supplement, no. 5 (January, 1705), appended to volume i of the Review. My attention 
was called to these poems, and to the reference to Milton, by Mr. A. L. Bouton of New 
York University, to whose knowledge of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century prose I 
am otherwise indebted. Through C. A. Moore's Shaftesbury and the Ethical Poets 
(Modem Lang. Assoc, Publications, xxxi. 277-8) I have learned of two wretched 
unrimed poems published in 1711 by Henry Needier, "the first actual literary follower 
of Shaftesbury." The more important of these pieces is a deistic attempt to prove the 
existence of God from the works of creation, the other is entitled To the Memory of 
Favonia {Works, 2d ed., 1728, pp. 135-9, 198-200). Needier quotes from Paradise Lost 
on pages 66 n., 67, 70-71 n., 73 n. 



I02 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Defoe's Review was not the only periodical in the early eighteenth 
century to publish blank verse, for between 1708 and 171 1 more than 
sixty examples of it appeared in the British Apollo} Many of the 
questions and answers which make up this prototype of Notes and 
Queries are in verse, the style and meter of the questions being 
copied in the answers. The Apollo contains a few references to 
Paradise Lost, as well as several phrases borrowed from it,^ and 
practically all the unrimed questions and replies have some echoes 
of the Miltonic style and diction, the subUmity of which the con- 
tributors often made painful efforts to copy. Apparently the 
writers were convinced that to escape being prosaic it was necessary 
to get as far as possible from ordinary speech, for one bard actually 
referred so grandiosely to making malt that he was understood to 
mean farming ! ' Yet, although the pieces are written in the sorriest 
doggerel, the frequent use of blank verse for such purposes in a 
periodical so popular that it went through four editions is of con- 
siderable significance. 

Although Isaac Watts is known to-day only as a writer of hymns, 
his collected works fill six huge tomes. Among the most popular 
of his productions was the Horae Lyricae, originally published in 
1706 and reprinted for the sixteenth time in 1793. This volume 
contains eight poems in an easy, flowing blank verse which as a rule 
shows little influence from Paradise Lost. A few lines from True 
Courage will show what Watts's unrimed poetry is like : 

He that unshrinking and without a Groan 
Bears the first Wound may finish all the War 
With meer couragious Silence, and come off 
Conqueror: for the Man that well conceals 
The heavy Strokes of Fate he bears 'em well.'' 

Frequently, however, the style stiffens and becomes more formal and 
heroic, with the result that we have passages like this: 

And his Throne 
Mortal Access forbids, projecting far 
Splendors unsufferable and radiant Death. 
With Reverence and Abasement deep they fall 
Before his Sovereign Majesty, to pay 
Due Worship.* 

* See below, Bibl. I and Appendbc B, 1 708-11. 

* For two references, see vol. i, nos. 25, 113. The phrase "ever during Dark" 
(from P. L., iii. 45) is in vol. i, quarterly paper no. i; "Disastrous Influence shed" (of. 
P. L.,\. 597) is in vol. i , supernumerary paper no. 8; "Earth, self-ballanced in Ambient 
Air" (from P. L., vii. 242, 89) and "paassy" (P. L., i. 285, 703, etc.) occur in vol. ii, no. 
104. 

' Vol.ii,no. 18, and supernumerary paper no.4. * Horae Lyricae (2d ed., 1709), 191. 

* To Mitio {ib. 2 70) . The heroic poem. The Celebrated Victory of the Poles over Osman 



WATTS 103 

Here are the inverted word-order, the diction, and something of the 
sonorous pomp which distinguish Paradise Lost. Another poem in 
the same volume ^ shows the "vast Reverence" Watts had for Mil- 
ton, though he declares, ''The Length of his Periods, and sometimes 
of his Parentheses runs me out of Breath. ... I could never believe 
that Roughness and Obscurity added any thing to the true Grandeur 
of a Poem; nor will I ever affect Archaisms, Exoticisms, and a quaint 
Uncouthness of Speech, in order to become perfectly Miltonian. 
'Tis my Opinion that Blank Verse may be written with all due Ele- 
vation of Thought in a modern Stile." ^ It is to Watts's credit, in- 
deed, that he dropped many Miltonic characteristics that were not 
suited to his purpose, but kept the run-over lines and the constant 
shifting of the pauses which many of his contemporaries disregarded. 
So partial was he to these features of Milton's prosody that he even 
introduced them into the heroic couplet. "I have attempted in 
Rhime," he announced, "the same variety of Cadence, Comma and 
Period, which Blank Verse Glories in as its pecuHar Elegance." ^ 
The result was poetry like the following, an ugly duckling that gave 
little promise of the suppleness and grace the freer couplet was to 
develop : 

Then our Zeal 

Blaz'd and burnt high to reach th' Ethereal Hill, 

And Love refin'd like that above the Poles 

Threw both our Arms round one another's Souls 

In Rapture and Embraces. Oh forbear, 

Forbear, my Song! this is too much to hear, 

Too dreadful to repeat; such Joys as these 

Fled from the Earth for ever! * 

Watts was one of a group of men and women who admired Para- 
dise Lost. Prefixed to the third edition of his Horae Lyricae (17 15) 
are two unrimed poems, both written in 1706, one of which, by 
Joseph Standen, speaks thus of the rebelhous angels: 

Incarnate Fiends! outragious they defy'd 
Th' Eternal's Thunder, and Almighty Wrath 
Fearless provok'd, which all the other Devils 
Would dread to meet. 

The other prefatory poem is by Watts's first cousin and life-long 
friend, Henry Grove, one of the contributors to the Spectator. This 

{ih. 229-38) , is more Miltonic; but, as it is the only piece of the kind that Watts wrote, 
the passage given above is more typical. 

^ Quoted above, p. 37; and see pp. 38, 425. 

* Horae, 1709, preface, pp. xx-xxi. ^ Horae, 1706, preface, p. [x]. 

* Funeral Poem on Thomas Gunston (composed 1701), Horae, 1709, p. 327. 



I04 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

piece is not Miltonic, but another of its author's short productions 
is.^ Grove and Watts received their early education at a noncon- 
formist academy kept by Thomas Rowe, where they had as school- 
mates Samuel Say, whose essays on Milton and imitations of him we 
have already noticed, and John Hughes, one of the first poets to copy 
the minor poems.^ Furthermore, another Thomas Rowe, a nephew 
of the teacher and a friend of Watts, translated one of Horace's 
odes into the verse of Paradise Lost, and his wife, "the famous, 
ingenious, and justly admir'd Mrs. Singer," wrote one confessed 
imitation of Milton, two others in which the indebtedness is equally 
clear, and considerable non-Miltonic blank verse. ^ It should be no- 
ticed that this group was made up of dissenters, that all but two of 
the men were ministers, all but one of unusual piety, and that the 
only one of the seven who was not particularly interested in religious 
matters, John Hughes, was the only one who did not write blank 
verse. There can be no question that in these cases, as in many 
others, Milton's Puritanism and the religious nature of his principal 
poem had not a little to do with the admiration he received. 

In the first sixty years after the pubHcation of Paradise Lost blank 
verse was most often employed (outside of the drama) for transla- 
tions of the classics. This is not to be wondered at, since the Eng- 
lish epic was obviously patterned after those in Greek and Latin, 
which were themselves unrimed. In these early metrical para- 
phrases, however, Milton's style and prosody frequently had little 
or no place. They do not, as we have seen, enter into the first un- 
rimed poem published after his epic (Roscommon's version of the 
Ars Poetica, 1680), nor are they to be found in Thomas Fletcher's 
brief translations from the Aeneid, which came twelve years later .^ 
But they do appear in the adaptations of Horace made by Samuel 
Say and by Thomas Rowe, and they are frankly acknowledged in a 
piece which Addison brought out in 1704, Milton's Stile Imitated, in 
a Translation out of the Third Aeneid. This poem, which shows a de- 

^ See Bibl. 1, 1709. ^ See pp. 90 above and 442-3 below. 

' See Bibl. I, 1708 w., 1704 ?, bef. 1710?, and App. B, 1729-39. Mrs. Rowe's 
devotional books had a remarkable sale throughout the eighteenth century. 

^ See below, Appendix B, 1692. Fletcher had previously translated the first book 
into heroic couplets {Poems, 1692, pp. 65-119), a performance which he afterwards 
deeply regretted. "There is nothing which I can so hardly forgive my self," he wrote 
in the preface, "as that I took such pains to make it worse than I needed. I mean, by 
confining my self to Rhime, when blank Verse, as it would have been more easie, so I 
am perswaded it would have been more natural. . . . Rhimes ... do but emasculate 
Heroick Verse, and give it an unnatural Softness. In Songs, Pastorals, and the softer 
sorts of Poetry, Rhimes may perhaps be not unelegantly retain'd; but an Heroe drest 
up in them looks like Hercules with a Distaflf." 



TRANSLATIONS 105 

cided tendency to fall into couplets, is a poor imitation, but verbal 
borrowings at times bring it close to its model.^ It is nearest "Mil- 
ton's stile" in the following passage: 

'Tis said, that thunder-struck Enceladus 

GroveUng beneath the incimibent mountain's weight, 

Lies stretched supine, eternal prey of flames; 

And, when he heaves against the burning load. 

Reluctant, to invert his broiling limbs, 

A sudden earthquake shoots through all the isle. 

And Aetna thunders dreadful under-ground. 

In view of the admiration for Paradise Lost which Addison later 
expressed in the Spectator papers, it seems only natural that he 
should have imitated it; but we are surprised to find "Mat" Prior, 
"the earliest, as he was one of the most consummate, masters of 
EngHsh famihar verse," doing the same thing. Prior's versions of 
two of the lofty hymns of CalUmachus are so highly condensed as to 
be abrupt, but his blank verse is much better than what Addison or 
most other men of the time wrote. Prosodically it is marked by a 
large proportion of the weak endings that distinguish Shakespeare's 
later manner but are rare in Paradise Lost. His use of blank verse 
was not Hmited to translations, for three of the poems recently dis- 
covered at Longleat are without rime, — a brief, crudely-expressed 
prophecy, a six-line paraphrase from Virgil's fourth Georgic, and a 
"Prelude" with the beginning of a tale from Boccaccio. In the first 
two of these far from successful ventures there is little if any trace of 
Milton's style, but in the last one there are marked signs of it, as the 
following interesting assault upon neo-classic rules will show: 

Of the noblest Heights and best Examples, 
Ambitious, I in English Verse attempt. 
But not as heretofore, the line prescrib'd 
To equal cadence, and with semblant Sounds 
Pointed, (so Modern Harmony advises) 
But in the Ancient Guise, free, uncontroll'd, 
The Verse, compress'd the Period, or dUated, 
As close discourse requires, or fine description. 
Such Homer wrote; such Milton imitated.^ 

^ Compare, for example, the description of Mt. Etna in eruption, 
The bottom works with smothered fire involved 
In pestilential vapours, stench, and smoke, 

with Milton's Unes {P. L., i. 236-7); and note the use of "orient beams" (of. P. L., ii. 
399, iv. 644, vi. 15), "he back recoiled" (of. P. L.,vi. 194), "on the grundsiledge" (cf. 
P.L.,i. 460). 

* Prelude to a Tale from Boccace, in Waller's edition of Prior's Writings (Camb., 
1907), ii. 339. For the other two pieces, see pp. 318, 334, of the same volume. Another 



I06 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

We have already made the acquaintance of the critical Oxford 
professor of poetry, Joseph Trapp, who, not content with champion- 
ing Paradise Lost, turned it into Latin.^ In 1703 Trapp began a 
translation of the complete works of Virgil, the first to be made in 
blank verse. The character of this decidedly Miltonic version — 
which was not finished till 1731, and which, strangely enough, en- 
joyed a considerable popularity, reaching its fourth edition in 1755 
— may be judged by comparison of the following lines with Addi- 
son's rendering of the same passage: 

'Tis said, the Bulk of huge Enceladus 

Blasted with Light'ning, by This pond'rous Mount 

Is crush'd; and jEtna, o'er him whelm'd, expires 

Flame from it's burst Volcano's: And whene'er 

He shifts his weary Side, Trinacria all 

Groans trembling, and with Smoke obscures the Sky.* 

The first part of Trapp's Aeneid was not published till 17 18, four 
years after Nicholas Brady, author of a famous metrical version of 
the Psalms, had brought out the first book of his translation.* 
"When dragged into the world, [it] did not live long enough to cry," 
Johnson said of this work,* which neither he nor the writer on Brady 
in the Dictionary of National Biography had ever seen. Theirs was 
no great loss; for Brady's version is inferior to Trapp's, and is inter- 
esting principally for its many lines with weak endings, for such off- 
hand phrases as "Peace Let's rather make," "two of our Gang," 
Andromache "the Relict" of Hector,^ as well as for being generally 
conversational and hence on the whole but slightly Miltonic. An 
anonymous Verbal Translation of Part of the First Aeneid, which 
came out in 1726 (the year Brady finished his rendering) and ex- 
tended to only two pages, is more literal and still less Miltonic.^ 

To the unrimed and uninspired versions of parts of the Odyssey 
and Iliad which Elijah Fenton and William Broome published in 
1 71 7 and 1727 respectively a special interest attaches, not only be- 
cause these are the earliest renderings of Homer into blank verse, but 
because their authors also turned half of the Odyssey into couplets 

of the poet's expressions of dissatisfaction with the closed couplet is given on pp. 59-60 
above. 

^ See p. 17 above. His Latin version appeared in two volumes (1741, 1744). 

* Aeneis, iii. 728-33; cf. above, p. 105. 

^ A year before, in 1713, he had published as a "specimen " the first hundred lines 
of book i, as Proposals for Publishing a Translation of Virgil's Aeneids in Blank Verse. 

* "Dryden," in Lives (ed. Hill), i. 453. 
' iv. 132-3, iii. 809, 422. 

" Miscellaneous Poems by Several Hands, published by D. Lewis, 1726, pp. 307-9. 



PARODIES 107 

for Pope. Their rimed and unrimed translations are entirely unlike, 
the one being as unmistakably pseudo-classic as the other is Mil- 
tonic; yet in the books that Fenton rimed for Pope there are not a 
few words and phrases taken from Paradise Lost, a circumstance 
which will surprise no one who knows that he wrote a life of Milton, 
edited his epic, and used its meter and style in a paraphrase of a 
chapter from Isaiah.^ 

The first poem to popularize blank verse was, as we have already 
observed, a parody, the Splendid Shilling (1701), the success of which 
naturally led other writers to attempt the same easy path through 
humor to fame. The only unexpected thing about these imitations, 
eight of which appeared before 1725, is that they came so slowly. 
The first one. Gay's Wine (1708), does not mention the Splendid 
Shilling, but refers to Philips's Cyder as if that alone were its source.^ 
There can be no question, however, of its indebtedness to the earlier 
burlesque, and, as will be seen from the following lines, to the epic 
which both poems parody: 

Bacchus divine, aid my advent'rous song, 
That with no middle flight intends to soar: 
Inspir'd, sublime, on Pegasean wing, 
By thee upborne, I draw Miltonic air.' 

The poem exhibits not only the obvious indications of "Miltonic 
air," — inverted word-order, parentheses, and the use of adjectives 
for adverbs, — but also a fondness for unusual words in -ean or -ian.^ 
Like Philips, Gay seems to have thought well of the work he paro- 
died, for the number of verbal borrowings from widely separated 
parts of Paradise Lost indicate a familiarity with that poem which 
could hardly have resulted from indifference or dislike.* Wine is a 

^ See Bibl. I, 171 2. For the use Broome made of Lycidas and the octosyllabics, see 
pp. 426, 445-6, below. 

2 See lines 114-20 (Muses' Library ed.), where Bleinheitn also is mentioned. 

3 Lines 12-15; cf. P. L., i. 13-14. 

* For example, Pegasean, Titanian, Celtiberian, Heliconian, Lenaean, Oxonian, 
Ariconian, Phcebean, sylvestrian, Croatian, Centaurian, scymmetrian, Dircean. 
^ Here are a few of them: 

So mists and exhalations that arise 
From hills or steamy lake dusky or grey 
Prevail, till Phoebus sheds Titanian rays, 
And paints their fleecy skirts with shining gold. 

The upheaved oak, 
With beaked prow, rides tilting o'er the waves. 
Drive hence the rude and barbarous dissonance 
Of savage Thracians. 
(Lines 50-53, 67-8, 171-2; cf. P. L., v. 185-7, xi. 745-7, vii. 32-4.) Compare also the 
passage quoted in the text with P. L., i. 13-14. 



I08 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

jovial piece and, although the humor is somewhat heavy, can still be 
enjoyed; it certainly furnished a suitable entrance into the world of 
letters for its lazy and lovable author, who owed his reputation to 
a burlesque pastoral and a comic opera and who jested even in his 
own epitaph. 

The other parodies that followed in the wake of the Splendid Shil- 
ling are of little importance and of less worth. One which resembles 
PhiHps's work in confessing its burlesque imitation of Milton and in 
being devoted to the joys of drinking, is by the Countess of Winchil- 
sea; ^ three others belong with the large body of indecent literature 
published at the time. Some sHght interest, however, attaches to 
translations of two mock-heroic Latin poems of that period. The 
first of these, Edward Holdsworth's Muscipula (1709), which de- 
scribes "with the purity of Virgil and the pleasantry of Lucian" a 
plague of rats and the invention of a mouse-trap, was a favorite in 
the eighteenth century, appearing alone or in collections some thir- 
teen times (four the first year) and apparently being turned into 
English eight or nine times. At least three of these translations are 
unrimed burlesques of Paradise Lost, — those published in 1709 (by 
Daniel Bellamy), 1715 (by an unknown writer), and 1749 (by John 
Hoadly); the last two are really amusing. The translation, "in 
imitation of Milton's style," of Addison's Latin battle of the cranes 
and the pigmies, made in 1724 by Bishop Warburton, Pope's friend 
and literary executor, is significant as a concrete illustration of the 
friendly relationship existing between the two supposedly hostile 
schools of poetry; for Warburton, who often expressed his admira- 
tion for Paradise Lost, no more showed a poor opinion of blank verse 
by making humorous use of it than did the author of the Splendid 
Shilling.^ 

If these parodies have lost much of the humor they once had, it is 
in part because the epics, translations of the classics, and other even 
loftier flights which they burlesqued no longer attract the attention 
they once did. It will be remembered that these were years when 
Blenheim and RamilHes, Oudenarde and Malplaquet, were furnish- 
ing bards with lofty themes, when pseudo-sublime Pindaric odes 
were in great favor, when Blackmore was busy penning "heroic 
poems," when Dryden was translating Virgil, Pope Homer, and 
Prior Callimachus. And there were even more ambitious attempts 

1 Bibl. 1, 1713- 

2 Warburton's poem contains a number of phrases borrowed from Paradise Lost. 
For the burlesques and mock heroics noticed above, and many later parodies, see pp. 
315-22 below. 



POEMS ON HEAVEN AND HELL 109 

than these, for between 17 14 and 1726 a number of writers chose the 
most exalted of all subjects, making heaven, hell, and chaos their 
scenes of action and the Almighty himself one of their characters. 
Their success is considerably greater than would be expected, prob- 
ably because the poems are all frank and close imitations of Paradise 
Lost; for obviously many difficulties and dangers connected with 
the Miltonic manner are avoided when it is employed on Miltonic 
matter. 

The first of these essays in the sublime ^ seems to have been Prae- 
existence, a Poem in Imitation of Milton, which, originally published 
in 1 7 14, was reprinted in 1740 and 1800 and obtained a wide circula- 
tion through being included in "Dodsley's Miscellany." ^ Even if it 
is, as Gray declared, "nonsense in all her altitudes," ^ yet the ''non- 
sense" is couched in some of the best blank verse written during the 
period. The poem opens with the return of the angels from victory 
over Satan, and describes their reception by Milton's schoolmaster 
Deity, who tells them of the world that is to be created. The earth, 
curiously enough, is to be a place of punishment, where the less sin- 
ful of Satan's followers may have a second chance. In style and 
diction the piece is quite as Miltonic as in subject-matter; yet it 
escapes the pitfalls of tumidity and dull prose into one or the other 
of which most contemporary blank verse fell, and at its best is not 
without dignity and nobility of utterance. The coming of the Deity 
is thus described : 

Out flows a Blaze of Glory; for on high 
Tow'ring advanc'd the moving Throne of God, 
Vast and Majestick; on each radiant side 

1 Unless we include Samuel Wesley's rimed Hymn on Peace to the Prince of Peace 
(1713), because of such verbal borrowings as 

Th' Etherial Mold 
Purg'd off its Dross, and Shone with Native Gold, 

The Father's Co-eternal Son, 

Or Mantling Vine's, on Mossy Couches laid, 

Near the soft Murmur of some bubling Spring 

With Angel-Guests Discourse 
(lines 31-2, 42, 66-8; cf. P.L.,ii. 139-41, iii. 2, iv. 258-60, and Comus, 276, 294). 
Wesley quotes three lines from Paradise Lost on his title-page. See also pp. 38, 45 n. i, 
above, and p. 429, n. i, below. 

^ Edition of 1748, i. 164-78. A poem with the same title — presumably the same 
work — was printed at Newcastle in 1768, with the note that it was "written in the 
last century, and now carefully revised by D. Mountfort." 

' Correspondence of Gray, Walpole, West, etc. (ed. P. Toynbee, Oxford, 1915), ii. 91. 
Although Gray was writing about the first edition of the "Miscellany" (1748), Mr. 
Toynbee's notes seem to refer to some other issue, and hence are confusing. 



no THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

The pointed Rays slope glittering, at the foot 
Glides a full Tide of Day, that onward pours 
In liquid Torrents through the black Abyss.^ 

The other end of the story of our universe, the terminus ad quern 
which loomed large in the thought and reading of religious persons in 
the eighteenth century, is taken up in an anonymous and undated 
piece, The Last Day, which must have appeared about the same time 
as Prae-existence?' It seems to be a production which its few readers 
were not unwilling to let die, for apparently only the first book was 
published. In this book the Deity summons his angels about him to 
announce the destruction of the world and sends Elijah to warn 
mankind to repent. Here is part of the description of the heavenly 
assembly : 

Full of himself, amidst 

The ample Concave, the Almighty sate. 

Sate unapproach'd; below the Hierarchal States, 

Ten thousand thousand Demigods await 

His Motion, he his Scepter gently bowing 

In Signal of Permission, strait assume 

The immortal States with Reverence due, their Thrones 

Order above Order, in bright Array 

Like radiant Constellations.' 

A similar work, The Last Judgment of Men and Angels, brought 
out in 1723 by Thomas Newcomb, is of importance solely because 
of its size; for until 1787, when Glover's Athenaid like a wounded 
snake dragged its slow length through thirty dreary books, it seems 
to have been the longest unrimed poem in English. Yet this splendid 
folio, with its 12,350 lines, dropped into oblivion without causing a 
ripple to reach the shores of literary history; and no wonder, for, 
since Newcomb makes every character declaim a vague, lofty speech 
several pages in length on every possible occasion, the work is both 
tiresome and hard to follow. The long opening scene in heaven, in 
which a Puritan Deity commands his angels to destroy the world, is 
followed by various councils to which Satan summons Belial, 
Moloch, and their peers in order to thwart this design. A war be- 

^ Lines 42-7. Such expressions as "the vast Obscure," "th' Empyraum vast," "th' 
impyral Mould," "th'^f/ierea^MoMW" (lines 15, 80, 113, 204) , are characteristic of the 
diction of the poem. 

2 Another anonymous work on the same subject, which I have not seen. Description 
of the Four Last Things, viz., Death, Judgment, Hell, and Heaven, in Blank Verse, ap- 
peared in a second edition in 17 19. 

3 Page 9. On page 19 is a not unpleasing description of " the delightful Banks of the 
River Mola, near Bansteed in Surrey," part of which recalls Paradise Lost, i. 781-8, iv. 
680-88. 



NEWCOMB 1 1 1 

tween the two forces is ended, as in Paradise Lost, by the coming of 
Messiah, who from a flaming chariot hurls thunderbolts upon the 
rebel angels. Then follows the destruction and renovation of the 
world, after which, again as in Milton, an angel shows Adam a 
lengthy vision. As if this were not enough, the prosody, diction, 
and style of the work are frankly Miltonic, and a large number of 
phrases are unblushingly transferred from the earher work.^ Al- 
though the following passage is not so close to Paradise Lost as are 
most others, it will give some idea of the verse, — which is far better 
than one would expect, — as well as of Newcomb's feeUng for the 
broad aspects of nature : 

Thus spoke our common Parent! while the Eve 
Hasting apace all down the Western Sky- 
Led on the Twilight; that, a browner Veil 
Of Darkness shadowing all the Vales below, 
Parent of downy Slumbers!* 

^ Here are a few instances. After casting their chaplets on the pavement before the 
Deity (i. 120-21, cf. P. Z,., iii. 349-52), the angels sing: "Thee, Father, first they name, 
Immense, Supreme" (i. 181, cf.P. Z,., iii. 3 7 2-3). The assembly of heathen deities that 
convenes at Satan's call (vii. 404-533) is closely modelled on Milton's enumeration of 
the same evil spirits as they rise from the lake of fire (P. L. , i. 392-521) ; the description 
of Satan's "faded Majesty" (ii. 603-46) is from Milton {P. L., i. 589-608); so is the 
scene in which Satan casts his "baleful Eye" upon his followers and thus addresses 
them, 

Warriors, Thrones, 

Angels, the Boast so late of yonder Skies; 

Chuse ye these Billows then, whereon to lay 

Your weary'd Limbs after the cruel Toil 

Of Battel? 

(viii. 604-6, 619-23, cf. P. L., i. 56, 315-21); and so are his reference to Azazel (whom 
he mentions by name in vi. 348), 

A Cherub (who by right that Station claim'd) 

Unfurl'd the heav'nly Ensign 
(ii. 257-8, cf. P. L., i. 533-6), his apxjstrophe to hght, 

Hail sacred Light! whose fair and beauteous Beam 

More gladly I revisit, wandring long 

Beneath the nether Shades 

(iv. 1-3, cf. P. L., iii. i, 13-15), and his description of hell as a place 
Just serving thro' the Darkness to reveal 
Sad Scenes of Sorrow 
(xii. 518-19, cf. P. L., i. 63-5). Some of the shorter phrases borrowed are "the Lapse 
of murmuring Streams" (i. 803. cf. P. L., viii. 263); "from Morn to Eve, from Eve to 
dewy Morn" (ii. 381, cf. P. L., i. 742-3); "pensive Steps, and slow" (x. 875, cf. P. L., 
xii. 648); "dark thro' Excess of Light" (xii. 144, cf. P. L., iii. 380); "varied alone with 
soft or solid Fires" (xii. 508, cf. P. L., i. 228-9, said of hell in each case). 

^ x. 915-19; cf. X. 775- xi. 35 passim. Some years later Newcomb published four 
other works in Miltonic blank verse : Part 0} Psalm cxlviii after the Manner of Milton 
(PP- 339~42 of his Miscellaneous Collection of Poems, 1740; see also ih. 17-20, 218-19, 



112 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Still another religious work that not only makes use of the lan- 
guage and style of Paradise Lost, but borrows many phrases from it, 
is William Thompson's Poetical Paraphrase on Part of the Book of 
Job, in Imitation of the Style of Milton (1726).^ About the time this 
work appeared Thomas Curteis (1690-1747) published some fifteen 
pages of verse, which he reissued in 1728 as Eirenodia, a vague, ecsta- 
tic performance for which ''the great Milton" furnished the "pat- 
tern." It describes scenes in heaven, portrays the earthly Hfe of the 

Prince of Peace! from the Jessaean stem 
Self- infinite descended! 

and, after enlarging on the greatness of 

Fair Albion, compend of the wondrous globe 
Terrene, 

ends with a picture of the last judgment. Curteis has unqualified 
praise for Milton, the ''brightness" of whose "diction" he particu- 
larly admired and, as may be seen from the following lines, closely 
imitated : 

Massy globes, 
Continuous or excav'd, annoy no more 
The serried ranks compact, with havoc dire.^ 

Most of the writers we have thus far considered are minor, al- 
most minus, poets who are deservedly forgotten. If the reader feels 
that it matters little by whom they were influenced, he should at 

On Milton's P. L. and On Milton's Bust in Westminster- A bbey) ; Mr. Hervey's Meditations 
and Contemplations (1764, but two of the six pieces had appeared in 1757); The Retired 
Penitent, a Poetical Version of one of Young's Moral Contemplations (1760); The Death 
of Abel (from Salomon Gessner, "attempted in the stile of Milton," 1763). 

^ Some of Thompson's pilferings are from Milton's minor poems, as "dapple dawn" 
(p. 3, of. Allegro, 44), "the Eye-lids of the Morn Opening" (p. 16, of. Lycidas, 26). A 
few of his other borrowings are, "shedding soft Influence, with orient Beams" (p. 2, of. p. 
6, and P. L., vi. 15, vii. 375); "with choral Symphonies" (p. 2, of. P. L.,v. 162); "sure 
Pledge of rising Day (p. 3, cf. P. L., v. 168); "scowls o'er the bleak Landskip Snow or 
Hail" (p. 6, cf. P. L., ii. 491); a description of the ostrich "fledg'd with Pens," whose 
eggs "burst" 

With kindly Rupture, and disclos'd put forth 

The callow Brood 
(p. 10, cf. P. L., vii. 419-21); or of the huge creature that 

Wallowing unweildy, enormous in his Gate 
.... to his Mind 

Firm Peace recover'd soon and wonted Calm 
(p. 18, cf. P. L., vii. 411, V. 209-10). The preface expresses profound veneration for 
Milton and violent antipathy to rime. 

2 R. Freeman's Kentish Poets (Canterbury, 1821), ii. 126, 134, 127. Curteis's praise 
of Milton and his attack upon rime are on pages 120, 129-30. 



POPE 113 

least think of them as straws that reveal a breeze from a new quarter, 
which, gathering in volume, was about to strike the keen and glitter- 
ing spars on which Alexander Pope stretched his sails. To be sure, 
the artificiality of Pope's verse suggests not so much a winged boat 
as a swift, sharp-prowed launch, with the "put, put" of its exhaust 
corresponding to the incisive regularity of the heroic couplet; hence 
one may argue that this particular craft would scarcely have felt the 
wind at all. It would, indeed, be hard to find any poetry more un- 
like Paradise Lost and Lycidas than The Dunciad and the Epistle to 
Arbuthnot. The differences are not hmited to style, prosody, dic- 
tion, and the like, but extend to verse-form, subject-matter, types of 
poetry used, and even to the men themselves and their conceptions 
of literature and life. As a result, admirers of the one are seldom 
able to do justice to the poetry of the other, and it is naturally as- 
sumed that Pope himself did not appreciate the work of Milton. 
This assumption may be correct, for the real thoughts and tastes of 
"the wicked wasp of Twickenham" are hard to fathom; ^ but at 
least he had read the earlier poet carefully. Indeed, many a person 
who has prided himself on his enjoyment of Paradise Lost and 
thought Pope had no conception of what true poetry is, has not pos- 
sessed a tithe of the scorned bard's knowledge of Milton. 

Evidence of this knowledge is of many kinds and is found in every 
possible place. First of all, explicit references to Milton abound in 
Pope's poems, letters, prefaces, footnotes, and in the record of his 
conversations.^ One of the most interesting of these references is in 

^ For instance, though he translated Homer and edited Shakespeare, one cannot be 
certain that he cared particularly for either poet. 

^ Besides writing an epigram on Bentley's edition of Paradise Lost (which, according 
to the preface of Newton's edition, he had examined throughout with care), Pope men- 
tioned Milton ten times in his poetry (see Abbott's Concordance), the best- known pas- 
sage being in his Imitations of Horace (II. i. 99-102) : 

Milton's strong pinion now not Heaven can bound, 

Now, serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground; 

In quibbles, angel and archangel join, 

And God the Father turns a school-divine. 

There are also references to Milton in Windsor Forest, 7-10, the Epistle to Arbuthnot, 
319-20, the satirical essays prefixed to The Dunciad {Works, Elwin-Courthope ed.,iv. 
73. 85), and in Pope's footnotes to the same poem (e. g., ii. 92, iv. 4,112, 247, and the 
note to the appended "Declaration," Works, iv. 227; in many of these notes borrowings 
from Milton are pointed out). Paradise Lost is quoted appreciatively in letters to 
Caryll, Blount, and Digby (Works, vi. 177, Dec. 21, 1712; vi. 380-81, Oct. 21, 1723; 
ix. 75, July 20, 1720); and Lycidas in a letter to Trumbull (ib. vi. 6, March 12, 1713). 
Particularly interesting is Pope's correspondence with Jonathan Richardson, the 
Milton enthusiast, who consulted him about the Explanatory Notes on Paradise Lost 
which he was preparing {Works, ix. 492-509), and to whom Pope sent a sonnet begin- 
ning "Fair mirror of foul times," which had been discovered in Chalfont and attributed 



114 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

a letter to Caryll, to whom he writes, " I keep the pictures of Dryden, 
Milton, Shakspeare, &c., in my chamber, round about me, that the 
constant remembrance of them may keep me always humble." ^ 
Much more convincing than this dubious humility, however, is the 
indisputable evidence from the words, phrases, and lines which Pope 
transferred from Milton's verse to his own. In The Dunciad alone he 
used such expressions no fewer than thirty times and in the Iliad 
fifty-six times. The extent of these borrowings — there are over one 
hundred and ninety of them^ — is surprising in view of the differ- 
ences not only between the two men but between the meters they 
employed. Poets who admired Paradise Lost commonly took 
phrases from it, but they used them almost exclusively in their blank 
verse. Not until we reach Thomas Warton do we find a writer who 
introduced Miltonic phrases into rimed poetry so frequently as Pope 
did, and perhaps no one else has ever employed so many in the heroic 
couplet. Furthermore, Pope's borrowings are not crowded into a 

to Milton {History of the Works of the Learned, 1739, ii. 107-8). In the course of the 
acquaintanceship indicated by these letters, which extended over a period of twenty- 
two years (1722-44), there must have been considerable discussion of Richardson's 
favorite poet. From Pope's conversation as recorded in Spence's Anecdotes (ed. Singer, 
1820, index and pp. 197-8) nine references to Milton have been preserved, of which the 
following is the most interesting: "Milton's style, in his Paradise Lost, is not natural; 
'tis an exotic style. As his subject lies a good deal out of our world, it has a particular 
propriety in those parts of the poem: and, when he is on earth, wherever he is describing 
our parents in Paradise, you see he uses a more easy and natural way of writing. 
Though his formal style may fit the higher parts of his own poem, it does very ill for 
others who write on natural and pastoral subjects" {ib. 174). In the notes to the Iliad, 
Paradise Lost is either quoted from or referred to thirty-two times (i. 9, 97, 478; ii. 255, 
44°) 552, 939, 950, and "Observations on the Catalogue"; v. 164, 422, 517, 928, 971; 
vi. 245; vii. 48,526; viii. 16, 88, 364; xiii. 384; xiv. 296, 395; xv. 17, 86, 252; xvi. 194, 
354, 904; xvii. 564; xxii. 114; xxiv. 417); and there is one citation from Samson 
Agonistes (vi. 329). In one of the notes (xiv. 395) thirty lines from three books of the 
epic are introduced. The notes to the Odyssey are by Broome and, it is interesting to 
observe, contain few references to Paradise Lost. Pope's own postscript to the Odyssey, 
however, has a paragraph on Milton, who is also mentioned three times in the preface 
to the Iliad. In the last of these passages, "any one who translates Homer" is urged 
"to consider him attentively in comparison with Virgil above all the ancients, and with 
Milton above all the moderns." Finally, it is probable that Pope had a hand in some of 
the twenty or more pieces in the Grub-Street Journal that deal with Milton. These 
pieces are either reprinted or referred to in Memoirs of the Society of Grub-Street (1737), 
i. 19-24, 42-5, 129, 167, 168; ii. 96-9, 102-3, 133, 182-3 (4 pieces), 222, 245, 254-5 (2 
pieces), 257-62 (2 pieces), 292, 308, 323; those merely referred to in the Memoirs may 
be read in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1. 377-8, ii. 571-2, 658-9, 690-1, 753-4, 840-1, 
905-6. The Journal, to quote Mr. Elwin, "was set up in Pope's interest, and ... he 
was 'suspected of having projected it, and was at least a frequent contributor'" 
(Pope's Works, viii. 268, n. i). See below also, p. 115, n. 5. 

1 Works, vi. 145, June 25, 1711. In a letter to Richardson he speaks of himself as "a 
worse writer by far than Milton" {ib. ix. 506, June 17, 1737). 

* See below, Appendix A. 



POPE 



115 



few pieces, but are scattered throughout his work, being found in at 
least twenty-five poems. It is also significant that, while practically- 
all of the early pilferers from Milton made use of his epic only (few 
persons at that time having any appreciation of the minor poems 0, 
yet Pope used the shorter pieces in his early and later work, and, 
except in The Dunciad and the Homer, borrowed from them quite as 
much as he did from the epic. Lines or phrases from nearly all of 
them appear in his verse, — from Allegro, Penseroso, Comus (there 
are nineteen from Comus), Lycidas, the Nativity, from three of the 
sonnets, and even from Arcades and the Vacation Exercise. Nor is 
it fair to suggest, as Thomas War ton did, that he was "conscious 
that he might borrow from a book then scarcely remembered, with- 
out the hazard of a discovery, or the imputation of plagiarism." ^ 
On the contrary. Pope praised the volume and lent it to at least one 
of his friends.^ It is striking that a poet so deficient in lyric power 
should be found among the earliest admirers of these lyric master- 
pieces, and should be the first writer to make much use of them,* as 
well as the first to show familiarity with the great body of Milton's 
work.^ 

In the preface to his Iliad Pope wrote, "Perhaps the mixture of 
some Graecisms and old words after the manner of Milton, if done 
without too much affectation, might not have an ill effect in a version 
of this particular work, which most of any other seems to require a 
venerable antique cast." He does not say here that such words have 
been introduced, but in the postscript to the Odyssey he frankly ac- 
knowledges that "in order to dignify and solemnize these plainer 
parts . . . some use has been made ... of the style of Milton. A 
just and moderate mixture of old words," he adds, "may have an 

^ Even Dennis, who borrowed freely from Paradise Lost, appears to have quoted 
from them only once, and Philips not at all (cf. below, p. 423, notes 5, 6). 

2 In his edition of Milton's minor poems (1785), p. ix. Warton says it was through 
his father, the elder Thomas Warton, that Pope came to know the poems, and adds, 
"We find him soon afterwards sprinkling his Eloisa to Abelard with epithets and phrases 
of a new form and sound, pilfered from Comus and the Penseroso." As a matter of fact, 
Pope knew these poems long before 171 7, when his Eloisa appeared; and the "sprink- 
ling" that Warton observed is to be found in the Pastorals and Windsor Forest, which 
were published the one eight and the other four years before the Eloisa epistles. 

^ Sir William Trumbull (see his letter to Pope, Oct. 19, 1705, Pope's Works, vi. 1-2). 

* Except, to be sure, Robert Baron, whose work was of no consequence (see pp. 427- 
8 below). 

^ He borrowed not only from ten of the minor poems and from the epic, but from 
Paradise Regained and Samson. Every book of Paradise Lost yielded one or more con- 
tributions to his work, and one book gave as many as 25. Pope's copy of Bentley's 
edition of the epic showed that he had carefully considered the suggested textual 
emendations and marked such as appealed to him (Newton's ed., preface). 



Il6 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

effect like the working old abbey stones into a building ... to give 
a kind of venerable air." From these remarks the reader might ex- 
pect to find considerable Miltonic diction in the translation, but he 
would be doomed to disappointment. To be sure, such words as 
"refulgent," "refluent," "resplendent," "translucent," "adaman- 
tine," "massy," "ethereal," do occur, though infrequently;^ and 
there are unusual words like "circumfusile," "intorted," "oracu- 
lous," "obtend," ~ besides common words employed in their original 
meaning's, as "th' effusive wave" (poured out), "the narrative old 
man" (fond of telling stories), "stoops incumbent" (bending or 
resting over), "implicit" (entwined), "depending vines" (hang- 
ing).^ Yet these are not "old words," and to us, at least, have 
nothing of the effect of "old abbey stones." We should remember, 
however, that a large number of words which are perfectly familiar 
to-day, and many of which were common in Shakespeare's time, 
seemed to the Augustans strange and antiquated. "Bridal," 
"gleam," "host" (in the sense of army), "hurl," "ruthless," "wail," 
and "woo " were spoken of as late as 1778 as "once no doubt in com- 
mon use." ^ This shows how difficult it is to determine what Pope 
meant by "old words after the manner of Milton." We may get 
light, however, from a satirical article contributed to the Grub-Street 
Journal, which says that " another method of imitating Milton is to 
make use of antiquated words, scarce any where else to be met with, 
such as dulcet, gelid, umbrageous, redolent, &c." ^ As these adjectives 
are all from the Latin, it may be that by "antiquated" Pope meant 
"antique." In any case, his language was probably loose and his 
thought somewhat vague ; but he seems to have had in mind words, 

1 For example, v. 2, 348, vii. 128, x. 350, 534, etc.; v. 51; v. 549, ix. 570, 634; x. 434, 
xvii. 105; X. 473; vii. 112, ix. 287, 567, etc.; v. 150, 351, etc. 

2 iii. 541, 555, X. 642, xxii. 88. "Disparted," "discumbers," "adherent," "welters" 
(v. 468, 474, 547, xiv. 155), and many more might be added. 

^ xxii. 490 (cf. V. 412, "from his . . . mouth effus'd the briny tide"); iii. 80 (also 
Iliad, iii. 200); v. 63; ix. 514 (also Iliad, xxiii. 823); v. 88 (and cf. xiii. 131). Note also 
"decent hand" (xiii. 273), and "vest succinct" (xiv. 83). As the concordance to 
Pope's works does not include his translations of Homer, it is difficult to sa.y how many 
of these unusual, Miltonic words there are or how often they occur, but the total number 
is considerable. They are scattered, however, through thousands of lines, so that they 
produce scarcely any effect. In the part of the Odyssey entrusted to Fenton, on the 
other hand, one is distinctly conscious of the loftier, more formal, and more Miltonic 
diction. 

* James Beattie's Essays on Poetry and Music, 237; cf. 238, and p. 64 above. 

* Memoirs of the Society of Grub-Street (1737), i. 22. Two of the words are mentioned 
in the same connection in the Art of Sinking in Poetry (Pope's Works, x. 372), and 
similar advice is given in the Guardian, no. 78 (which is by Pope) , although the section 
in question was omitted when the essay was reprinted as the fifteenth chapter of the 
Art of Sinking. 



POPE 117 

derived in the main from Greek or Latin, which were unusual at the 
time and which nowadays, if we noticed them at all, we should term 
poetic. Some of them were probably not taken from Milton, but 
were merely of the kind that his usage had sanctioned. However it 
was, the employment of these uncommon words by so conservative a 
writer as Pope shows how appreciably Milton was enlarging the 
poetic vocabulary. 

While the bard who " lisp'd in numbers " was still a child of twelve 
or thirteen he composed four thousand lines of an epic on the puis- 
sant Alcander, prince of Rhodes. "There was Milton's style," he 
told Spence, "in one part" of this poem; but, as the remaining parts 
were modelled upon Spenser, Cowley, Homer, and others, the work 
was presumably rimed and was affected by Paradise Lost only in 
subject-matter, diction, phrasing, and possibly "machinery." ^ This 
juvenile performance, which was later destroyed, is of no great signifi- 
cance except as showing at how early an age Pope began to admire 
Milton. Nor can much stress be laid upon Atterbury's plan (to 
which his imprisonment put an end) of having Pope adapt Samson 
Agonistes for the stage.^ There is, however, another of Pope's un- 
finished projects that deserves more attention than it has yet re- 
ceived. This work, undertaken when its author was at the height of 
his powers, was, like the boyish piece, to have been an epic. It was 
to deal with Brutus, the mythical founder of Britain, and was, he 
told Spence, "more than half" done because "all exactly planned." 
Yet only these few lines seem to have been composed, and until 
recently even these were lost : 

The Patient Chief, who lab'ring long arriv'd 
On Britain's coast and brought with fav'ring Gods 
Arts Arms & Honour to her Ancient sons: 
Daughter of Memory! from Time 
Recall; and me w"» Britains Glory fird, 
Me far from meaner Care or meaner Song, 
Snatch to the Holy Hill of spotless Bay, 
My Countrys Poet, to record her Fame 
Say first w' Cause? that Pow'r h . . .' 

This blank verse is not specially Miltonic. There are some inver- 
sions, to be sure, particularly in the first, fifth, and sixth lines; but 

1 See Spence's Anecdotes, 24-5, 276-9, and Ruffhead's Lije of Pope (1769), 25-7. 

2 We are told that it was to have been divided into acts and scenes and presented by 
the king's scholars at Westminster. See Atterbury's letter referring to an earlier con- 
versation (Pope's Works, \x. 49, June 15, 1722), and Newton's Paradise Lost (2d ed., 
1750), vol. i, p. biii. 

^ Discovered by E. D. Snyder and quoted with variant readings in his note on 
"Pope's Blank Verse Epic," Journal 0} English and Germanic Philology, xviii. 583. 



Il8 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

the passage is too brief to admit of any certainty regarding such 
points (about which Pope himself was doubtless far from clear) as 
the prosody, diction, and style of the work and their probable in- 
debtedness to Milton. But was an unrimed epic written early in the 
eighteenth century by a poet who had already made extensive use of 
Paradise Lost likely to have escaped such indebtedness, particularly 
when, in direct violation of Boileau's dictum, its author had taken 
for his ''machinery" not pagan gods but the Almighty and the good 
and bad angels of the Puritan work? If, therefore, the deformed, 
sickly body could have retained its equally deformed though resolute 
spirit for a few years more, — ' much less than ten ' would have been 
enough, he told Spence, — we might have had the supreme tribute 
from the leader of the Augustans to the last of the Elizabethans.^ 

In view of the surprising extent of the influence Milton exerted 
on Pope, one turns expectantly back to Dryden, but only to find a 
totally different state of affairs. Dryden's admiration for Paradise 
Lost was frequently and generously expressed,^ but it had slight ef- 
fect upon his work. He never wrote an unrimed poem, and he bor- 
rowed but a phrase or two from Milton; ' yet he did what has never 
been attempted since, he turned the loftiest of epics into a spectacu- 
lar play. It was this undertaking that led to the meeting between 
the last of the giants of the Renaissance, old, blind, and "fallen on 
evil days," and the brilliant and highly successful leader of the new 
literary school. To Dryden's request for permission to make a 
rimed drama of the epic Milton replied, "It seems you have a mind 
to Tagg my Points, and you have my Leave to Tagg 'em." ^ 

^ Before the appearance of Mr. Snyder's article our knowledge of Pope's plan came 
from two sources, Spence's Anecdotes (pp. 288-9, from a conversation with Pope in 
1743), and Ruffhead's Life (1769, pp. 409-23), which was compiled from the poet's own 
papers now in the British Museum. This projected epic gives interest to Percival 
Stockdale's story {Memoirs, 1809, ii. 44) that, when Pope was asked why he had not 
made a blank-verse translation of Homer, he replied that "he could translate it more 
easily into rhyme." Had he experimented with blank verse? The passages in The 
Seasons which have been attributed to him are probably Lyttelton's (see G. C. Ma- 
caulay in the Athenaeum, Oct. i, 1904, p. 446, and in James Thomson, 1908, pp. 243-4). 

2 See above, p. 14 and n. i. 

' Langbaine's Account of the English Dramatick Poets (Oxford, 1691, p. 157) points 
out the similarity of these lines to a passage in Samson Agonistes: 

Unmoved she stood, and deaf to all my prayers, 

As seas and winds to sinking mariners. 

But seas grow calm, and winds are reconciled 

{Aureng-Zebe, act i, in Works, Scott-Saintsbury ed., v. 212; cf. Samson, 960-62). The 
seventh line of Veni, Creator Spiritus, "O source of uncreated light" {ih. xi. 193), recalls 
the opening of the third book of Paradise Lost. 

* See my note in The Review (later The Weekly Review), New York, June 14, 1919. 



DRYDEN 119 

The result of the tagging, The State of Innocence and Fall of Man, 
an Opera (1677), is a very curious production, such a line as 

O Prince, O Chief of many throned powers, 

for example, appearing as 

Prince of the thrones, who in the fields of light.* 

Great condensation was necessary on Dryden's part, since he 
crowded into his five brief acts considerable new as well as much of 
the old conversation, besides all the important happenings of the 
epic. In consequence the great Vallombrosa simile is reduced to 

Our troops, like scattered leaves in autumn, lie.^ 

The sophistication, the conventionality of expression, the "points" 
and antitheses of which the bewigged Restoration wits were fond, 
characterize the inhabitants of Dryden's hell and of his Eden. The 
fallen angels, for instance, in leaving the lake of fire, 

Shake off their slumber first, and next their fear;^ 

Eve replies to Adam's wooing, 

Some restraining thought, I know not why, 
Tells me, you long should beg, I long deny ; < 

while Adam, assuring her that he expects to live "still desiring" 
what he still possesses (her love), declares that at their union "roses 
unbid" 

Flew from their stalks, to strew [the] nuptial bower . . . 

And fishes leaped above the streams, the passing pomp to view.* 

Such grotesque features are obvious enough and have been noticed 
by most readers, with the result that admirers of Dryden have been 
at a loss to explain how that appreciative and skilful artist came to 
make such a feeble and absurd adaptation of a great work. The dif- 
ficulty has been increased by the plausible remark of Sir Walter 
Scott, whose comment prefixed to the standard edition of the play 
has been read more often than the work itself: "The costume of 
our first parents, had there been no other objection, must have ex- 
cluded the State of Innocence from the stage, and accordingly it was 
certainly never intended for representation." ^ Yet, in view of the 
prominence which Dryden gives to scenery and mechanical devices, 

* Act i {Works, V. 126; cf. P. L., i. 128). * Act ii, scene ii {ib. 140). 
2 Ib. (cf. P. L., i. 302-3). * Act iii {ib. 142-3). 

* Ib. 127. ^ Ib. 95. 



I20 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

it will be clear that the situation is exactly the reverse of what Scott 
thought it, and that Milton's 'tagged verses' really serve as little 
more than a frame- work for an elaborate musical spectacle. With 
Dryden the action and verse are subordinated to mechanical con- 
trivances, and many of the lines may have no other function than to 
carry the story and gain time for the scene-shifters.^ But either no 
one cared to spend the large sum necessary to stage the piece, or pos- 
sibly Milton's political activities were not yet forgotten; at any rate, 
it was never given. It it had been, the honor which fell to Addison of 
being the popularizer of England's greatest poem might, though in 
less measure, have been Dryden's. 

We have now followed the influence of Paradise Lost up to 1726. 
We have found several rimed poems, notably those of Blackmore, 
which employ the supernatural machinery of the epic; some others, 
like those of Pope, which take words and phrases from it; and ap- 
proximately one hundred and fifty-five pieces in blank verse, all 
but about sixty-six of which make use of its style. For an age that 
deUghted in imitation and held an exalted opinion of Milton, this is 

1 The frequent and detailed stage directions indicate many changes of scene, and, 
in the opportunity they afford for producing striking effects through costly mechanical 
contrivances, recall the elaborate masques of the period, upon one of which £2400 was 
expended. Here are some of the directions: "Betwixt the first Act and the second, 
while the Chiefs sit in the palace, may be expressed the sports of the Devils; as flights, 
and dancing in grotesque figures: And a song, expressing the change of their condi- 
tion" (end of act i, ih. 133). — "Raphael descends to Adam, in a cloud. . . . They 
ascend to soft music, and a song is sung. The Scene changes, and represents, above, a 
Sun gloriously rising and moving orbicularly. ... A black Cloud comes whirling from 
the adverse part of the Heavens, bearing Lucifer in it; at his nearer approach the body 
of the Sun is darkened" (act ii, scene i,ih. 133, 136). — "A Night-piece of a pleasant 
Bower: Adam and Eve asleep in it. ... A Vision, where a tree rises loaden with 
fruits; four Spirits rise with it, and draw a canopy out of the tree; other Spirits dance 
about the tree in deformed shapes" (act iii, ih. 146-7). — "The Cloud descends with 
six Angels in it, and when it is near the groimd, breaks, and on each side discovers six 
more" (act iv, ih. 151). — "The Scene shifts, and discovers deaths of several sorts. A 
Battle at Land, and a Naval Fight. . . . Here a Heaven descends, full of Angels and 
blessed Spirits, with soft Music, a Song and Chorus" (act v, ih. 175-6). 

Intended stage presentation is also indicated by the attention which Dryden gives 
to music, dancing, and songs, and by his plan of omitting the transformation — impos- 
sible in the theater — which Lucifer makes in his appearance before meeting Uriel (see 
P. /,., iii. 634-44; Dryden's Lucifer simply puts on "a smooth, submissive face," act ii, 
scene i, ih. 136). Furthermore, in the Stale of Innocence it is not, as in the Bible and in 
Milton, the serpent who tempts Eve, since in the theater this idea would be hard to 
carry out and probably ludicrous; it is Lucifer in his own shape. The "costume" of 
our first parents, which to Scott presented an insurmountable difficulty, could easily 
have been managed, as it has been to-day in moving pictures of the story. Clearly, 
Dryden did not intend the characters to appear in puris naturalihus ,iox ,hes\Ats having 
them exhibit no consciousness of nudity after the fall, he introduces into a vision in the 
third act a woman who is "habited like Eve." 



THE STATUS OF BLANK VERSE 121 

not extensive borrowing. Besides, although we have encountered a 
number of eminent writers in this survey, we have found very few 
Miltonic poems with which even scholars are familiar, and, except 
for the Splendid Shilling and Cyder, none that appear to have at- 
tracted much of any attention even in their own day. Thomson, 
for example, refers to Cyder as the first poem after Paradise Lost to 
discard rime.^ Furthermore, few of these early followers of Milton 
exhibit whole-hearted allegiance to his measure. Their productions 
seem as a rule to have been experiments, and not entirely satisfac- 
tory ones at that, for they were seldom repeated more than once or 
twice. Writers like Dennis or the editors of the British Apollo, who 
return frequently to the new meter, appear to have done so to avoid 
the trouble of riming. 

It was not the hostility of the Augustans to blank verse in the ab- 
stract that stood in the way, for we have seen that even Pope used 
the measure and that most of his friends were favorably inchned 
towards it. To what, then, was the neglect due? To the poems 
themselves which Milton's followers wrote. These almost without 
exception lack inspiration and interest of any kind. Most of them 
are translations, hollow panegyrics, religious moraHzings, or bur- 
lesques, and their verse, usually colorless and dull, falls either into 
unrimed couplets or into sheer prose. We find them unreadable and 
leave them unread, and there is every indication that the contem- 
poraries of Pope and Addison did the same. In point of expression 
they are at their best when their subjects are most exalted, that is, 
when farthest from ordinary hf e ; for the ablest verse is to be found 
in translations of the classics, and in pieces like Prae-existence and 
the Last Day, which have practically the same subject-matter as 
Paradise Lost. The Splendid Shilling, to be sure, had shown how 
effectively Milton's style and diction might be employed for humor- 
ous purposes; but this knowledge was of little account, for most 
writers had even less occasion to use the burlesque than the epic. 
Up to 1726 Cyder afforded almost the only instance of the serious 
treatment of an unpretentious topic in blank verse; and yet, though 
its success might be expected to have inspired imitation, it seems in 
the first seventeen years after its publication to have influenced only 
two pieces, one an attack upon it and the other a parody. That is, 
no one appears to have been willing to follow Philips in using blank 

1 Autumn, 645-7. At the end of the century even so good a scholar as Thomas 
Warton was ignorant not only of Philips's predecessors but of his contemporaries and 
immediate successors; for he tells us in his edition of Milton's minor poems (1785, p. x) 
that blank verse "after its revival by Philips had been long neglected." 



122 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

verse seriously for everyday subjects. Most writers, rolling tamely 
in the rut of neo-classicism, never thought of doing so, others may 
have agreed with Pope that it was ''quite wrong" to employ Milton's 
style for such themes, and many presumably doubted their ability 
to handle topics of the kind in a measure not yet domesticated. 

For Milton's example, together with the praise of Roscommon, 
Dennis, Addison, and similar critics of rank, had made blank verse 
respected, admired, — and shunned. Paradise Lost was so remote, 
so unlike other poetry, that men stood in awe of it; they did not 
know how to adapt its lofty language, involved style, and strange 
irregular prosody to their humbler and less imaginative themes. In 
a word, blank verse seems to have been regarded in 1725 much as the 
telephone was in 1875, as a remarkable toy which it was interesting 
to experiment with but of which only a few enthusiasts expected to 
make any real use; or, to choose an illustration from the field of lit- 
erature, its position in 1725 was similar to that of vers litre in 1900, 
- — it could no longer be called a novelty but was by no means a popu- 
lar meter. Cordially disliked and vigorously assailed by many, 
warmly admired and eloquently defended by others, Milton's mea- 
sure, like Whitman's, seemed so ill adapted to the purposes and 
methods of most poetry that there was apparently little prospect of 
its coming into general use. Very few, to be sure, had so high an 
opinion of Leaves of Grass as Pope's contemporaries had of Paradise 
Lost, but in each case there was general doubt whether the new 
meter could be effectively employed by any save the master who 
invented it. 

There was certainly no reason why the partisans of the couplet 
should be alarmed if a period of sixty years produced only one hun- 
dred and fifty unrimed poems, nearly half of which did not extend 
beyond a few lines. Indeed, at the end of the first quarter of the 
eighteenth century neo-classicism was seated firmly on the throne of 
public opinion with the closed couplet as its scepter; English num- 
bers were being, if they had not already been, refined to the highest 
possible point, and sacrifices were constantly offered before the 
altars of Reason, Propriety, and Elegance, whose supremacy no one 
seemed seriously to question. 



CHAPTER VI 

THOMSON 1 

When the fortunes of English verse seemed to be thus comfortably 
settled for some time to come, there appeared in the London book- 
shops a thin shilling folio of sixteen pages, one of which announced in 
large type, "Winter, a Poem, by James Thomson, A.M." The work 
gave rise to little comment, but must have found not a few read- 
ers, since it was reprinted within three months and passed through 
two more editions before the year was out. Encouraged by this re- 
ception, the author issued in the following year, 1727, a companion 
poem, Summer, in 1728 a third. Spring, and in 1730 the completed 
Seasons. The work came eventually to include 5,541 lines, but the 
germ of the whole and all its significant features are to be found in 
the 405 lines of the original Winter, which may fairly be termed "an 
epoch-marking work." Yet, as is often the case, the marking was 
done so quietly that no one seems to have been conscious of any- 
thing unusual about the poem. Even Thomson himself, a few 
months before composing it, wrote to a friend, "I firmly resolve to 
pursue divinity as the only thing now I am fit for," and after it was 
partly finished referred to it as "only a present amusement," which 
he should probably drop before long.^ 

Nor is the real significance of Winter generally understood at the 
present time. The poem is supposed to be one of the earHest and 
most important manifestations of what has unfortunately been 
termed the " beginnings of the romantic movement " ; but such " be- 
ginnings " may be found at almost any time and place one chooses to 
look for them, and all who know Thomson best are agreed as to his 
essential classicism. The importance of the use of blank verse in 
The Seasons has often been emphasized, but without suflicient reali- 
zation of the number of unrimed poems that preceded it or of its 
dififerences from them. As regards nature poetry also Thomson's 

^ Since 1907, when this chapter was first written, a number of what seemed to be its 
more novel points of view have appeared in G. C. Macaulay's James Thomson {English 
Men of Letters, 1908). The delay has, however, enabled me to take advantage of various 
suggestions in that sound and discriminating study. 

2 Letters to Dr. Cranston, April 3, and September, 1725, Poetical Works (Aldine ed. 
1847), vol. i, pp. xvi, xxiii. 



124 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

contribution has frequently been misunderstood; for, though he is a 
figure of the first importance in this field, he did not create the taste 
by which he was appreciated. The feeling for the beauty of the ex- 
ternal world revealed in Lady Winchilsea's Nocturnal Reverie, Gay's 
Rural Sports, Shaftesbury's Characteristics, and other works pub- 
lished before 1726 has been pointed out by various scholars; and it 
is noteworthy that a genuine love of nature is apparent in Ramsay's 
Gentle Shepherd, Dyer's Grongar Hill, and John Armstrong's descrip- 
tion of winter, all of them pubHshed, or composed, in the years 1725 
and 1726, when Winter was being written. Accordingly, while 
Thomson is the most important nature poet before Wordsworth, he 
was by no means the first writer of his time to feel, or the first to give 
effective expression to the feeHng, that 'night and day, sun, moon, 
and stars, likewise a wind on the heath, are all sweet things.' 

The principal significance of The Seasons lies in its popularity. 
Blank verse as good as Thomson's had been written before Winter 
appeared ; Philips had employed it for familiar themes, and Watts 
had arrived at a style, diction, and prosody much nearer to those in 
vogue to-day than what the Scottish poet made use of. Yet English 
literature went on unchanged. Poetry far more romantic, with a 
finer feehng for nature expressed in nobler, more lyric verse, — 
pieces, that is, not unlike the "Songs of Innocence " or the best of the 
"Lyrical Ballads," — might conceivably have been written in 1725; 
but they would almost certainly have left as few traces on the cen- 
tury which gave them birth as did Blake's work and Thomson's own 
Castle of Indolence. The Seasons accomplished two things of the high- 
est importance. It showed how real nature could be dealt with effec- 
tively in poetry, and how blank verse could be successfully devoted 
to the treatment of everyday subjects; but it did both by virtue of 
its popularity, by being enjoyed by all, the people as well as the 
poets. It might have contained twice as many faults and half as 
many excellences as it did and still, had it remained equally popular, 
have lost none of its historical significance. What was needed was 
success, and Thomson's success was due in part to his Limitations and 
in part even to his very faults.^ It was only a road which "got some- 
where" that would have been followed, one that seemed both to 
readers and to poets clearly to lead well up towards the summit of 

^ Wordsworth held that what the eighteenth century principally admired in Thom- 
son was "his false ornaments," which "are exactly of that kind . . . most likely to 
strike the undiscerning" {Prose Works, ed. Grosart, 1876, ii. 119). Miss Reynolds's 
remark is better, "A touch more of subtlety, of vision, of mystery, of the faculty divine, 
and Thomson might have waited for recognition as Wordsworth did" {Nature in Eng- 
lish Poetry, 2d ed., Chicago, 1909, p. loi). 



THOMSON 125 

Parnassus. Less obvious ways, that wound past shyer flowers, or 
through valleys overflowing with a more haunting melody of birds, or 
by cliffs affording wider views of the might and mystery of "old 
ocean's gray and melancholy waste," would to us be more alluring; 
but in Pope's day their beauty would have been seen by few, and 
without the sanction of popular approval they would have been little 
used. For the eighteenth century did not share our interest in lovely 
by-ways that lose themselves in woods. The cult of the minor poet 
had not yet risen; revivals of perverse but powerful writers, or of 
rapturous but formless and obscure ones, were unknown. It was a 
period when bards were unusually willing to follow a leader, and this 
was true not only of the Augustans but of those who were stirred by 
vague feehngs which they hardly understood and to which they were 
unable to give poetic voice. 

The enthusiasm and rapidity with which Thomson's example was 
followed illustrates how ready poets were for a clear path into new 
fields. In the sixty years before Winter appeared there were only 
some hundred and fifty unrimed pieces, whereas over a hundred were 
printed in the fifteen years (1731-45) that followed the completion 
of The Seasons and about seventy in the next five years. Among the 
poems that came after 1726 were a number of the most widely-read 
works of the century, Somervile's Chace (1735), Glover's Leonidas 
(1737), Young's Night Thoughts (1742-6), Armstrong's Art of Pre- 
serving Health (1744), and Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination 
(1744). Thomson is, of course, not responsible for all the blank verse 
published between 1731 and 1750, but he had some effect on most of 
it, and without his example many of the pieces that employed it, 
particularly the longer works, would never have been written. Fur- 
thermore, his influence had only begun to make itself felt by 1750, 
for it persisted well into the nineteenth century, even after the shores 
of England had slipped forever from the straining eyes of Byron and 
Keats and the bay of Spezzia had closed over the restless heart of 
Shelley. 

The vogue of The Seasons was far greater than is generally real- 
ized. Winter went through four editions the year it was published, 
and was reprinted in 1728, 1730, and 1734; Summer reached five sep- 
arate editions, Spring three, Autumn one; the collected Seasons was 
printed three times in 1 730 and forty-seven times more before the 
end of the century, besides being included in twenty-two editions 
of the poet's works: that is, it was published in whole or in part 
no less than eighty-eight times in the seventy-four years after it 
was first printed. Nor did its popularity cease then. Four editions 



126 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

appeared in each of the years 1802 and 1803, five in 1805, and, 
counting those included in the works and the three printed in Amer- 
ica, there were forty-four in the first two decades of the century.^ 
It was some seventy years after the first of the ** Seasons" was writ- 
ten that Coleridge, seeing a much- worn copy of the poem lying on 
the window-seat of an obscure inn, exclaimed, ''That is true fame! " ^ 
Tributes to the poem are so embarrassingly abundant that there is 
room to quote only a few of the later ones. In 1774 the author of the 
Sentimental Sailor declared that Thomson's "matchless song" 
would last as long as ''the circling seasons still appear." ^ In 1781 
the Critical Review remarked, "The beauties of spring have already 
been so amply described, and so nobly treated by Thomson, that few 
readers will bring themselves to imagine that any other writer can 
treat this subject with equal force, elegance, and propriety." * This 
comment occurs in a review of an anonymous poem on spring, the 
author of which "adores" the "amazing heights, by thee [Thomson] 
alone attain'd." ^ The Monthly Review asserted in 1793 that, to be 
effective, descriptive poetry needed to be "written by a master hand, 
little inferior to Thomson himself," and six years later mentioned 
certain requisites without which "the finest passages in Homer, Vir- 
gil, Milton, and Thomson, would excite no emotion." ® In view of 
these commendations and the opinion of James Grahame — himself 
no mean nature poet — that Thomson's descriptions have "a genius 
and felicity which none of his followers need ever hope to equal," ' it 
is not strange that John Aikin affirmed in 1804, " The Seasons . . . 
yields, perhaps, to no other English poem in popularity." ^ One is 
somewhat surprised, however, to find HazKtt remarking fourteen 
years later that Thomson was "perhaps, the most popular of all our 
poets, treating of a subject that all can understand, and in a way that 

^ These figures are taken mainly from the Caxton Head sale catalogue (No. 556, 
Feb. 19, 1912, which lists "nearly 150 different editions " of The Seasons), with addi- 
tions from the British Museum catalogue, and some from the Cambridge History of Eng- 
lish Literature (English ed., x. 446-7). An episode in Autumn was developed into "a 
legendary tale " {Philemon and Lavinia) by David Mountfort in 1783; Gleanings from 
Thomson, or the Village Muse, appeared about 1800 (see Mo. Rev., enl. ed., xxxi. 323), 
and a professed imitation so late as 1808 (see Eur op. Mag., liv. 218). 

2 Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets, 1818 {Works, 1902, v. 88). 

' Quoted, Mo. Rev., li. 342. 

* lii. 201. 

^ Quoted, ib. 203. 

^ Enlarged ed., xii. 222, xxLx. 337; cf. vi. 455. 

^ Preface to his British Georgics (Edin., 1809). 

* Letters on English Poetry (2d ed., 1807), 164. In the Cabinet of Poetry (ed. S. J. 
Pratt, 1808), which professes to include "only the best and most exquisite pieces," 
Milton occupies one whole volume (351 pages), Thomson 184 pages, and Pope 144. 



THOMSON 127 

is interesting to all alike." ^ Mr. Dennis's assertion that The Seasons 
"was to be found in every cottage, and passages from the poem were 
familiar to every school-boy," - is borne out by the facts that in 1761 
Michael Bruce ''employed himself at leisure hours in transcribing 
large portions of Milton and of Thomson," ^ that Burns declared his 
fellow-countryman to be one of his "favourite authors," * and that a 
certain H. I. Johns, who was born in 1780, "while quite a lad . . . com- 
mitted to memory nearly the whole of Thomson's Seasons," for 
"Thomson was his idol, and to his impassioned and glowing descrip- 
tions of Nature he ascribed, in no small degree, his love of the coun- 
try and his taste for elevating studies." ^ It is accordingly no more 
than the truth to say, with Mr. Seccombe, "From 1750 to 1850 
Thomson was in England the poet, par excellence, not of the eclectic 
and literary few, but of the large and increasing cultivated middle 
class"; ^ or with Mr. Saintsbury, "No poet has given the special 
pleasure which poetry is capable of giving to so large a number of 
persons in so large a measure as Thomson." ^ 

Such a popularity as this must have had far-reaching effects, 
which can be estimated only in a general way and many of which are 
hardly to be traced. In the field of poetry this influence was all the 
more marked because The Seasons appeared before either blank- 
verse or descriptive pieces had established themselves. Had it been 
published twenty-five years later, its vogue might possibly have been 
as great but its influence on hterature would not have been a tithe of 
what it was. Furthermore, to quote again from Mr. Saintsbury, 
Thomson "has the peculiar merit of choosing a subject which ap- 
peals to and is comprehensii)le by everybody; which no one can 
scorn as trivial and yet which no one can feel to be too fine or too 
esoteric for him. And though he treats this in the true poetical spirit 
of making the common as though it were uncommon, he does not 
make it too uncommon for the general taste to rehsh." ^ In conse- 

^ Lectures on the English Poets, 1818 {Works, 1902, v. 87). About the same time one 
William Wight prophesied, in his lines for the anniversary of Thomson's birth {Cottage 
Poems, Edin., 1820, pp. 8-9), that the "warblings" of his "heaven-taught lyre" would 
"but with Nature's self expire." 

^ Age of Pope (1894), 91. 

^ Memoir, in Works (ed. Grosart, Edin., 1865), 16-17. 

* Letter to John Murdoch, Jan. 15, 1783. 

^ W. H. K. Wright, West-Country Poets (1896), 275. So late as 1827 Henry Neele 
declared in his Lectures on English Poetry {Literary Remains, N. Y., 1829, p. 123), 
"Thomson is the first of our descriptive poets; I had almost said, the first in the 
world." 

• Diet. Nat. Biog. 

'' Ward's English Poets, iii. 169. * lb. 170. 



128 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

quence he was eagerly read by the simple cottager, the prosperous 
merchant, the fashionable lady, and the college don, while poets of 
all kinds paid tribute to him, — the sophisticated and artificial Pope, 
the spontaneous Burns, the delicate Collins, and the massive Words- 
worth. 

It may be interesting and not altogether profitless to speculate as 
to what would have been the development of blank verse without 
The Seasons. No later work could have taken its place, since both 
in subject-matter and in treatment it pleased all sorts and conditions 
of men better than any other poem of its century did, and since, 
aside from Paradise Lost, the only other unrimed work that enjoyed 
an extensive popularity was the Night Thoughts, which did not begin 
to appear till 1742, and in which even at this late time Young might 
not have relinquished his lifelong devotion to the couplet had it not 
been for the influence of the Scottish poet. Of course Thomson did 
not work alone. Enthusiasm for Paradise Lost, which was increasing 
rapidly between 171 2 and 1745, could not fail to affect poetry, and 
Thomson's immediate predecessors had done no slight service 
in famiharizing both writers and readers with the new measure. 
Twenty-five years earher such a work as Winter could hardly have 
been composed at all, nor would the English public have been ready 
to receive it. The probabilities are, therefore, that without The 
Seasons unrimed poems would have increased slowly in number and 
that now and then one of length would, like Cyder, have achieved 
some popularity. Yet it is hard to tell how far-reaching would have 
been the effect if the general use of blank verse had been delayed 
twenty years. 

How is it that Thomson came to do what none of his contempora- 
ries seemed capable of? The explanation is probably that Winter, 
which determined the character of all the "Seasons," was a Scottish 
work, was hardly more an expression of the literary England of its 
day or a product of the normal evolution of English poetry than was 
Leaves of Grass one hundred and twenty-five years later. It is Scot- 
tish throughout, it was written by a Scot, it was suggested by Scot- 
tish verses, it pictures Scottish scenes.^ Like the American work, it 
was the outcome of a different environment, of a somewhat different 
race and literary tradition, from that which found expression in the 

^ While composing the poem Thomson wrote to his friend Cranston (September, 
1725?): "There [in Scotland] I walk in spirit, and disport in its beloved gloom. This 
country I am in, is not very entertaining; no variety but that of woods, and them we 
have in abundance; but where is the living stream? the airy mountain? and the hang- 
ing rock? with twenty other things that elegantly please the lover of nature?" {Poetical 
Works, 1847, vol. i, p. xxii). 



THOMSON 129 

London literature of its time. Thomson had been reared in a wild 
Scottish country. He had, to be sure, spent ten years at the Univer- 
sity of Edinburgh; but the northern capital was then separated from 
the southern by a long, arduous journey and by marked divergences 
in almost every aspect of life and thought. "Broad Scots," which 
Thomson never lost, was then universal in Edinburgh ; men were less 
formal and finished but sturdier as well as more natural than in 
London; and pieces like the Gentle Shepherd and the winter poems of 
Riccaltoun, Thomson, and Armstrong (all written between 1724 and 
1726) show, when contrasted with the satires of Pope, Swift, and 
Young, or with the lighter verse of Prior and Gay, that poetry was 
closer to life in the northern metropolis than in the southern. 

Since the days of the Stuarts, EngUsh Kterature had been drawing 
more and more away from the people. By attaching itself to the 
court circle and, like the court, becoming dominated by artificial 
French standards, it had to a great extent come to be the diversion of 
a leisured coterie that set an exaggerated value upon regularity, pre- 
cision, elegance, and wit. These quahties, it goes without saying, 
did not then, as they do not now, particularly interest the average 
reader, who, though he may well have enjoyed the clever satire and 
the shrewd, tersely-expressed observations on life that mark neo- 
classic verse, nevertheless missed many things which his forefathers 
had found in poetry. That such was the true state of affairs is shown 
by the eagerness with which he turned to the periodicals, sentimen- 
tal drama, and fiction of the day, to the redactions of old romances, 
and to Milton. The attitude of the people is strikingly illustrated in 
the enthusiasm with which tljey greeted The Seasons. Here at last 
was contemporary poetry adapted to their taste, something that ap- 
pealed to their imagination, their love of the real country, as well as 
to their national pride and their sentimentaHty. Hitherto there had 
been a great gulf not only between blank verse and the fashionable 
poetry of the day, but between both kinds of verse and the taste of 
the large body of readers. Something had been done towards filhng 
this gulf, but the process promised to be a slow one; when suddenly 
an outsider, following his natural bent with little realization of its 
divergence from the habit of his new neighbors, bridged the chasm. 

But though scarcely more of a revolutionist than Johnson, — for 
he loved his ease and in general, even on most literary subjects, 
thought much like other men, — the bard ''more fat than bard be- 
seems" did in some matters raise a banner of mild revolt. He 
looked forward to finding at Hagley, his friend Lyttelton's estate, 
"the muses of the great simple country, not the little, fine-lady 



I30 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

muses of Richmond Hill." ^ To the second edition of Winter he 
added a vigorous preface assailing the literature of his time as a 
"wintry world of letters, . . . the reigning fopperies of a tasteless 
age" made up of "forced unaffecting fancies, little glittering pretti- 
nesses, mixed turns of wit and expression, which are as widely differ- 
ent from native poetry as buffoonery is from the perfection of human 
thinking." He urged poetry to "exchange her low, venal, trifling, 
subjects for such as are fair, useful, and magnificent," and to "exe- 
cute these so as at once to please, instruct, surprise, and astonish." 
This "choosing of great and serious subjects " was, he thought, a first 
step towards a much-needed "revival of poetry," and in his opinion 
nature afforded the best of themes because of its " magnificence " and 
"inspiring" quaHties, because it "enlarges and transports the soul." 
Hence, he concluded, "the best . . . Poets have been passionately 
fond of retirement, and sohtude. The wild romantic country was 
their delight." - These were vigorous words to pen when Pope, 
Swift, and Gay were at the height of their powers. They were prob- 
ably called forth by adverse criticisms of the first edition of Winter; 
for there is every indication that Thomson had no idea of reforming 
English taste when he wrote the poem, since he said of it, "Being 
only a present amusement, it is ten to one but I drop it whenever 
another fancy comes across." ^ 

In this same preface he spoke of nature's putting on "the crimson 
robes of the morning, the strong effulgence of noon, the sober suit of 
the evening, or the deep sables of blackness and tempest." Clearly, 
a poet who flamed thus in the cooler element of prose loved the florid 
and exuberant, the grand and vague. No wonder he was fond of 
Hakluyt's Voyages,^ the Faerie Queene, and of works which "up the 
lofty diapason roll," ^ or that he desired his "numbers" and his 
theme to be "wildly great." ^ He had a strong and instinctive dis- 
like for limitations of almost every kind. His fervent imagination 
was not definite, like Dante's; it delighted, as did Milton's, in large, 
general effects. It demanded a wide sweep. Such a line as 
Infinite splendour! wide-investing all ^ 

is typical of him. 

1 Letter to Lyttelton, July, 1743, Works (1847), vol. i, p. Lxxxvii. 

* I quote from the reprint in J. L. Robertson's admirable Oxford edition of Thomson 
(pp. 240-41), to which all my references are made. The italics are mine. 

' Letter to Cranston, September, 1725?, Works (1847), vol. i, p. xxiii. 

* See his letter to Mallet, Aug. 9, 1745 (Philobiblon Soc, Miscellanies, 1857-8, iv. 39, 
first pagination). 

* Castle of Indolence, I. xli. 362. ^ Winter, 27. 

^ Autumn, 1210. Miss Reynolds has an excellent paragraph on Thomson's "dislike 
of boundaries," in her Nature in English Poetry (1909), 92-3. 



THOMSON 131 

It was inevitable that a poet with these tastes should be deeply- 
stirred by the most sublime and sonorous of EngUsh poets. Thom- 
son has high praise for Milton in the first edition of Winter: 

Great Homer too appears, of daring Wing! 
Parent of Song! and equal, by his Side, 
The British Muse, join'd Hand in Hand, they walk, 
Darkling, nor miss their Way to Fame's Ascent.^ 

In the second of the "Seasons," Summer, he expressed his feelings 
with still greater warmth : 

And every greatly amiable Muse 

Of elder Ages in thy Milton met ! 

His was the treasure of Two Thousand Years, 

Seldom indulg'd to Man, a God-like Mind, 

Unlimited, and various, as his Theme; 

Astonishing as Chaos; as the Bloom 

Of blowing Eden fair; soft as the Talk 

Of our grand Parents, and as Heaven sublime.^ 

Thomson also wrote a preface to the Areopagitica, imitated both 
Allegro and Penseroso, referred to their author several times in his 
letters, and borrowed not only words and phrases but whole passages 
from him.3 Since nearly half of these numerous borrowings are from 
the minor poems, they reveal a close acquaintance, very unusual at 
the time, with the shorter as well as the longer works; and, as some 
of them occur in Thomson's juveniha, it is clear that his familiarity 
with Milton dates from an early and impressionable age. 

The language and style of The Seasons also, as one would expect, 
give abundant evidence of admiration for Paradise Lost. They do 
more: they indicate an essential kinship between the two poets on 
many vital matters. For example, the author of The Seasons liked 
the grand style and strove to write in it. Part of his admiration 
for Paradise Lost must have been due to its lofty aloofness of expres- 
sion, to the organ tone which he apparently tried to catch in the oro- 
tund and often splendidly impressive climaxes to which he was fond 
of working up. Milton's largeness of utterance will be heard in 
single lines, like 

Had slumbered on the vast Atlantic deep; 

or in such passages as these : 

^ Lines 289-92. 

^ Quoted from the first edition (1727), pages 47-8; the passage corresponds to lines 
1567-71 of the latest text. 

' See below. Appendix A. For passages in Thomson's letters which refer to Milton, 
see Macaulay's Thomson, 24 ("Evil is their good," cf. P.L., iv. no), 54 (Milton's 



132 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

The vegetable world is also thine, 

Parent of Seasons! who the pomp precede 

That waits thy throne, as through thy vast domain, 

Annual, along the bright ecliptic road 

In world-rejoicing state it moves sublime. 

Hence, in old dusky time, a deluge came: 
When the deep-cleft disparting orb, that arched 
The central waters round, impetuous rushed 
With universal burst into the gulf, 
And o'er the high-piled hills of fractured earth 
Wide-dashed the waves in undulation vast. 
Till, from the centre to the streaming clouds, 
A shoreless ocean tumbled round the globe. ^ 

The sonorousness of such resounding lines is sometimes increased 
by the Miltonic device of introducing unusual proper names which 
have an imaginative appeal: 

Whence with annual pomp, 
Rich king of floods! o'erflows the swelling Nile. 
From his two springs in Gojam's sunny realm 
Pure-welling out, he through the lucid lake 
Of fair Dambea rolls his infant stream. . . . 

.... and all that from the tract 
Of woody mountains stretched thro' gorgeous Ind 
Fall on Cormandel's coast or Malabar; 
From Menam's orient stream." 

One passage of the kind is of particular interest because the first part 
of it was clearly suggested by a purple patch in Paradise Lost: 

The huge incumbrance of horrific woods 
From Asian Taurus, from Imaus stretched 
Athwart the roving Tartar's sullen bounds; 
Give opening Hemus to my searching eye. 
And high Olympus pouring many a stream! 
Oh, from the sounding summits of the north, 
The Dofrine Hills, through Scandinavia rolled 

"Hail, wedded love," is quoted), 55 ("the mind is its own place" is cited, without quo- 
tation-marks, from P. L., i. 254). In the preface to the second edition of Winter Milton 
is mentioned and the expression "the sober Suit of the Evening" (of. "civil-suited 
Morn, Penseroso, 122) is used. 

1 Summer, 1008, 112-116; Spring, 309-16. See also Spring, 70-77; Summer, 175- 
84, 651-2; Winter, 94-117. The following lines {Summer, 90-94) illustrate how Thom- 
son, owing partly to the jerkiness of his style, sometimes failed in his attempts at the 
orotund : 

Prime cheerer, Light! 
Of all material beings first and best! 
EflSux divine! Nature's resplendent robe, 
Without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt 
In unessential gloom! 
* Summer, 804-27. 



THOMSON 133 

To farthest Lapland and the frozen main; 
From lofty Caucasus, far seen by those 
Who in the Caspian and black Euxine toil; 
From cold Riphaean rocks, which the wild Russ 
Believes the stony girdle of the world.^ 

There are some respects in which the Scottish bard even outdid 
his master, what was with the earher poet a native manner fre- 
quently becoming with the later one an exaggerated mannerism. In 
the following typical passage, for instance, naturalness of expression, 
as well as the flow of the verse, has been lost through excessive and 
inartistic inversions and the use of adjectives for adverbs: 

Here wandering oft, fired with the restless thirst 

Of thy applause, I solitary court 

The inspiring breeze, and meditate the book 

Of Nature, ever open, aiming thence 

Warm from the heart to learn the moral song. 

And, as I steal along the sunny wall. 

Where Autumn basks, with fruit empurpled deep, 

My pleasing theme continual prompts my thought.'' 

There may be as many distortions of the normal word-order in Para- 
dise Lost as in The Seasons, but they seem less frequent because they 
are better adapted to the epic style and because Milton introduces 
them more skilfully. It will be observed that in the passage quoted 
the adjectives which take the places of adverbs are likely to be out of 
their normal order, and that some of them, like "solitary" in the 
second hne, are used not so much adverbially as appositively. Ex- 
cept in such instances appositives are not common in Thomson, nor 
are parenthetical expressions.^ 

Thomson's use of words is no less Miltonic than his style. Adjec- 
tives, besides being, as we have seen, constantly employed as ad- 
verbs, are occasionally used as nouns. We find, for instance, "the 
blue profound," "that full complex," "the pure cerulean," "the 
blue immense," "the blue serene," "the breezy void," "the solitary 
vast," "the . . . Kcentious proud," and "whatever fair [i. e., beauty] 

1 Autumn, 782-93; cf. P. L., iii. 431-2. A passage in Thomson's Liberty (iii. 226- 
56), from which the following lines are taken, contains many proper names: 

To where the frozen Tanais scarcely stirs 
The dead Maeotic pool, or the long Rha 
In the black Scythian sea his torrent throws. 

^ Autumn, 668-75. Note such chiasmic inversions as "To the quire celestial Thee 
resound" (Summer, 190). 

* I have noticed parenthetical expressions in Summer, 1627 (cf. line 995 of the 1730 
edition); Autumn, 732, 889-91, 900-901, 1204; Winter, 410, 667, 926. 



134 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

High fancy forms." ^ Adjectives are made into verbs in such 
expressions as "Spring . . . Greened all the year," "whatever 
greens the spring," "to . . . serene his soul," "savaged by woe," 
"truth . . . Elates his being," "the . . . ray Russets the plain." ^ 
Verbs and substantives interchange places in the phrases "in sad 
presage," "a sweep of rivers," "the chide of streams," "one wide 
waft," "oaks . . . tuft the . . . mounts," "by hardship sinewed," 
"a . . . calm Fleeces unbounded ether," "the swain Disastered 
stands," "tempest the . . . brine." ^ In The Seasons, as in Paradise 
Lost, intransitive verbs are sometimes made transitive, and vice 
versa. The Nile, for instance, "devolves his maze," and a tongue is 
described as " devolving . . . A roll of periods " ; similarly, we have 
"dejects his . . . eye," "gazing the inverted landscape," "meditate 
the blue profound," "meditate the book," "protrudes the bursting 
gems," and, as examples of transitive verbs used intransitively, 
"insect armies waft Keen in the . . . breeze," and lightning "dis- 
closes wide." ^ 

In this matter of interchanging the parts of speech Thomson is, 
except in using adjectives for adverbs, more conservative than his 
master, but in the number of his unusual compound words he leaves 
him far behind. He makes these in almost every conceivable way: 
by combining adverbs with participles, as in "idly-butting," "idly- 
tortured," "seldom-meeting," "soon-descending," "ever-cheating," 
"ill-submitting"; ^ adverbs (or adjectives used as adverbs) with ad- 
jectives, as in "wildly-devious," "fair-diffusive," "richly-gorgeous," 
or with verbs, as in " full-exerts," " wide-hover," " thick-urge," " gay- 
twinkle";^ nouns with participles, as in "woodbine- wrought," 
"fever-cooling," "life-sufficing," "jargon- teaching," "stench-in- 
volved," "forest-rustling," "wisdom- tempered," "folly-painting," 

^ Slimmer, 1248 (cf. P. L., ii. 980), 1785; Autumn, 1097, 1356; Winter, 693; Au- 
tumn, 126; Winter, 804 (cf. P. L., vi. 203), 322; Spring, 1139-40 (cf. P. L., ix. 608, xi. 
717, etc.). 

2 Spring, 320-21; Autumn, 1260; Spring, 870; Summer, 1081; Autumn, 1336-7; 
Hymn, 95-6. 

' Summer, 1050 (cf. P. L., vi. 201, P. R., i. 394, etc.); Autumn, 712, 1267; Winter, 
271; Spring, 915; Summer, 1468; Autumn, 958; Winter, 278-9, 1016 (cf. Liberty, 'iv. 
142, and P. L., vii. 412). 

* Summer, 816; Autumn, 16-17; Summer, 1066, 1247 (cf. P. L., viii. 258, etc.), 
1248 (cf. Comus, 547, and Lycidas, 66); Autumn, 670, 1311; Spring, 121-2 (cf. P. L., 
ii. 1042); Summer, 1138. Somewhat similar is the use of "preys," instead of "preys 
upon" with an object, in "The . . . eagle . . . preys in distant isles" {Spring, 
759-65). 

^ Spring, 801, 1044; Summer, 26; Winter, 50, 210, 957. 

* Summer, 80, 851, 1622; Spring, 1120; Autumn, 173; Winter, 141, 788. 



THOMSON 135 

"snow-fed," or with adjectives, as in "dew-bright," "blood-happy," 
"plume-dark," or even with other nouns, as in "household-kind," 
"torrent-softness," "monarch-swain," "Parent-Power," "reaper- 
train," "labourer-ox." ^ Most common of all is the combination of 
an adjective (as a rule used adverbially) with a participle (com- 
monly the present), as in "white-empurpled," "fresh-expanded," 
"various-blossomed," "mellow- tasted," "sad-dispersed," "mute-im- 
ploring," "nice- judging," "white-dashing," "dire-clinging," "deep- 
' fermenting," "fierce-conflicting," "swift-gliding," "new-moulding," 
"hollow-blustering," "new-creating."^ As both present and past 
participles are used in these words, and as the adjectives are related 
to the participles in different ways, there is greater variety in such 
compounds than is at first realized; yet their number can hardly 
fail to impress even the casual reader, for a single line sometimes con- 
tains two, and five successive lines occasionally have as many as 
four.^ 

But the feature of Thomson's diction that is likely to attract most 
attention is his use of uncommon words derived from the Latin. He 
has, for example, "vernant," "clamant," "prelusive," "amusive," 
"infusive," "diffusive," "effulgent," "effulged," "effulgence," 
"detruded," "sublimed," "convolved," "convolution," "exani- 
mate," "efflux," "distent," "emergent," "relucent," "turgent," 
"luculent," "conjunctive," "incomposed," "effused," "infracted," 
"auriferous," "sequacious," "ovarious," "innoxious," "flexile," 
"illapse," "magnific," "concoctive," "empurpled," "agglomerat- 
ing," "incult," "relumed," "constringent." * Thomson also follows 
Milton in giving to a word a meaning or an appHcation which it 
had in Latin or Greek but has lost in English. Thus we find such ex- 
pressions as the farmer "incumbent o'er" the plough, "the liberal 

^ Summer, 461, 668, 836, 1544; Autumn, 1206; Winter, 151, 377, 615, 995; Sum- 
mer, 86; Autumn, 456, 869; Spring, 772, 985; Summer, 494, 546; Autumn, 225; 
Winter, 240. 

'^.Spring, no; Summer, 477; Autumn, 5, 705; Winter, 263; Spring, 163, 408, 912; 
Autumn, 875; Winter, 13, 159, 196, 951, 989, 1044. 

^ See, for example, Spring, 1059; Winter, 210, 437; Spring, 381-5. 

* Spring, 82 (cf. P. L., x. 679); Autumn, 350; Spring, 175, 216 (also Summer, 1660), 
868; Summer, 1229 (also Autumn, 657, 882); Spring, 190 (also Summer, 135, 635, 
Autumn, 38, etc.); Summer, 1519 (the New English Dictionary gives no instance of 
"effulge" before 1729, — Thomson's Bn7a«m'a and Sa,vsige's Wanderer); Autumn, 25 
(also Winter, 643, etc.; cf. P. L., iii. 388, v. 458, vi. 680); Spring, 568, 827 (also 
Summer, no), 837 {a\%o Summer, 343, Autumn, 1183, cf. P. L., vi. 328); Autumn, 839; 
Spring, 1052; Summer, 92; Spring, 145, 263; Summer, 162; Autumn, 693; Winter, 
710; Summer, 1776, 491 (cf. P. L., ii. 989), 509 (also 1256), 604, 648, 1713; Autumn, 
875, 1 161; Summer, 980, 1262; Autumn, 134 (cf. P. L., v. 773, x. 354), 408, 674, 766, 
884; Winter, 4gi {aiso8sS),6gg. See also Macaulay's r/!o»wo», 157-9. 



136 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

air" (abundant), "the crude unripened year," "the eflfusive South," 
the "lapse" of a stream, the "horrid heart" of a lion, a pool "re- 
verted" by its bank, "the latent rill," "Essential Presence" (God), 
"unessential gloom," "the opponent bank" (opposite), eaglets 
"ardent with paternal fire," "the informing Author" (God, who 
works within), "the outrageous flood" (violent), "will preventing 
will" (anticipating), "the sordid stream" (muddy), "bounteous" 
milk, "diffused" (of a person), walking "in cheerful error," storks 
"in congregation full, "mountains "invested with a keen . . . sky," 
"frequent foot," a river "constrained" between two hills, "the in- 
flated wave," " frost-concocted glebe " (cooked or solidified), "obse- 
quious " reindeer (obedient).^ It will be seen that these peculiarities 
of diction not only are of the same kind that Milton employed, but 
are frequently the same words put to the same uncommon uses. 
Other words which Thomson seems to have borrowed from the mas- 
ter are "mossy-tinctured," "low- though ted," "massy," "shagged," 
"dappled," "weltering," "darkling." ^ 

Any such analysis as this must, however, fall far short of giving an 
adequate impression of the language and style of The Seasons. It 
cannot show how frequently the characteristics occur, and it must 
overlook much that cannot be tabulated but that materially affects 
the general impression. The fact is that, if there is a pompous, con- 
torted way of saying a thing, Thomson is likely to hit upon it; that 
of two words he prefers the one of Latin origin and of two Latin 
words that which is less common. CalUng things by their right 
names and speaking simply, directly, and naturally, as in conversa- 
tion, seems to have been his abhorrence. The stories of Musidora 
and "the lovely young Lavinia" are closer to real country life than 
the language and style in which they are told are to ordinary speech ; 

^ Spring, 41 (cf. the . . . beech that o'er the stream Incumbent hung," Summer, 
1363-4, "night incumbent o'er their heads," Wittier, 924, and P. L., i. 226), 98, 142 (cf. 
Lycidas, 3), 144 (cf. "effusive source," Summer, 1732, "large effusion" of rain, Spring, 
176, and P. L., vi. 765), 160 (cf. P. L., viii. 263), 265 (cf. the "horrid loves" of animals, 
830, and P. L., ix. 185, etc.), 407, 496, 557 (cf. P. L., v. 841); Summer, 94 (cf. P. L.,u. 
439); Spring, 666, 760, 860 (cf. "Informer of the planetary train," i. e. God, and 
"Poetry . . . informs the page With music," Summer, 104, 1753-5), ^°7^ (cf- P- L., 
ii. 435, vii. 212, X. 232), 1 1 23 (cf. Nativity, 24); Summer, 386, 679; Atitumn, 517 (cf. 
Samson, 118), 626 (cf. with P. L., iv. 239, vii. 302, and cf. "erroneous race," Isaac 
Newton, 199, with P. L., vi. 146), 859, 882 (cf. P. L., i. 208, iii. 10, vii. 372); Winter, 6, 
loi, 166, 706 (also Autumn, 7), 854 (cf. P. L., vi. 783). 

2 Spring, 381 (cf. P. L., v. 285, Comus, 752); Autumn, 967 (cf. Comus, 6); Spring, 
840 (also Summer, 669, Autumn, 1244, etc., and cf. P. L., i. 285, ii. 878, etc., eleven 
times in all), 910 (cf. Winter, 281, and Comus, 429); Summer, 48 (cf. Allegro, 44, of the 
dawn in each case), 265 (cf. P. L., i. 78, Lycidas, 13); Autumn, 753 (also Winter, 536, 
andcf. P. Z,., iii. 39). 



THOMSON 137 

and, widely as these artificial pastorals differ from the homely tale of 
Michael's sheepfold, Thomson is nearer to Wordsworth in what he 
says than in how he says it. Instead of "You steal silently along the 
dale overhung with woods," he writes, 

There along the dale 
With woods o'erhung . . . 
You silent steal.^ 

Such a sentence, and contortions of EngHsh like 

The winding vale its lavish stores, 
Irriguous, spreads,'* 

would not be objectionable now and then; but what can be said in 
defense of passages like these ? 

A voice, than human more, the abstracted ear 
Of fancy strikes. 

Then too the pillared dome magniiic heaved 

Its ample roof; and luxury within 

Poured out her glittering stores. The canvas smooth, 

With glowing life protuberant, to the view 

Embodied rose.^ 

Furthermore, Thomson has a penchant for words which are to-day 
particularly disliked, such as "swain," "glebe," "gehd," "lucid," 
"vernal," "verdant," "umbrage," "mead," "verdure," "the fair," 
"the muse." He also delighted in unnatural and inflated circumlo- 
cutions, like "the household feathery people" (hens); "the copious 
fry" or "the finny race" or "the glittering finny swarms" (fish); 
"the furry nations," which include "the docile tribe" (reindeer) that 
live amid "the heapy wreath" or "the white abyss" commonly 
called snow.^ For birds he had more than fifteen periphrases, speak- 
ing of them in one place as "the plumy burden" that "winnow the 
waving element." ^ His masterpiece in circumlocution, however, he 
reserved for the volcano, 

The infuriate hill that shoots the pillared flame.« 

^ Spring, 909-14. ^ lb. 494-5. 

' Summer, 543-4; Autumn, 134-8. 

* Winter, 87, 877; Spring, 395; Autumn, 922; Winter, 811, 854, 81S, 819. 

5 Spring, 747-8. The other names I have noticed are "the plumy people," "the 
gay troops," "the tuneful nations," "the coy quiristers," "the glossy kind," "the fear- 
ful race," the muse's "brothers of the grove," "the soft tribes," "the feathered youth," 
"the aerial tribes," "the weak tribes," "the wanderers of heaven," "the plumy race," 
"the tenants of the sky" {Spring, 165, 584, 594, 597, 617, 689, 703, 711, 729; Summer, 
1121; Autumn, 986; Winter, 80, 137, 138). See also Spring, 753, 772, 789; Winter, 242. 

* Summer, 1096. 



138 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

This is all bad, very bad. Indeed, the turgid diction and the dis- 
torted, pompous style of The Seasons are largely responsible for the 
current underestimate of the poem. These qualities are the more ob- 
jectionable because they are used in picturing simple country life; 
for, according to our twentieth-century feeling, nature poetry ought 
above all other kinds to be natural. Our ancestors, however, held 
quite the opposite opinion. They used nature in poetry, as in paint- 
ing and architecture, for purely decorative purposes; as they con- 
ventionalized leaves and flowers for ornamental borders and the 
capitals of columns, so they conventionalized the landscapes with 
which they adorned their poems. It was chiefly in nature poetry, 
whether rimed or not, whether written before 1726 or after, that 
"poetic diction" flourished. One would expect, therefore, to find it 
in The Seasons. 

What makes this the more likely is that Thomson wrote in blank 
verse. The new measure, which was not yet established, still seemed 
to many mere prose; hence to be acceptable it needed every pos- 
sible enrichment. The ''swellings" of style and luxuriance of lan- 
guage in which Philips and Thomson indulged are in part, therefore, 
a kind of paste jewels used to ofifset the severity of their unadorned 
measure. Much like this motive is that to which John Aikin called 
attention in 1804. "The writers of blank verse," he remarked, 
"have been so sensible of their near approach to prose in the ver- 
sification, that they have been solicitous to give their language a 
character as different as possible from that of common speech. This 
purpose, while it has favoured loftiness and splendour of diction, has 
also too much promoted a turgid and artificial style, stiffened by 
quaint phrases, obsolete words, and perversions of the natural order 
of sentences." ^ 

Another reason why "loftiness and splendour of diction" were, in 
the minds of Thomson and his contemporaries, inseparable from 
good blank verse is that these qualities were strongly marked in the 
only unrimed poetry for which they had any regard, that of Milton 
and Philips. From Milton, as we have seen, Thomson not only took 
many of the actual words and phrases that he employed, but ac- 
quired the habit of using inversions, pompous Latinisms, strange 
compounds, and other uncommon expressions that lay at the bottom 
of his turgidity. But his debt was even greater than this, for in 
general he came under the spell of the luxuriance, splendor, and 
sonorous vagueness of Paradise Lost. Milton had naturally much 
of the Elizabethan gorgeousness, and it stood him in good stead 

^ Letters on English Poetry (2d ed., 1807), 1 18-19. 



THOMSON 139 

when dealing with a subject in which definiteness was often im- 
possible and usually undesirable. By means of sound, by the 
"long-commingling diapason" of his lines (obtained mainly through 
the use of Latin words) , and in part through a style and diction as 
lofty and as remote from everyday life as was his theme, he con- 
veyed a vivid impression of persons, things, places, and acts that are 
beyond description. This manner of Milton's Thomson adopted 
without realizing that what was fitting, necessary even, in picturing 
the wars of archangels and the creation of the solar system became 
ridiculous when applied to Musidora's bathing or to the shearing of 
sheep. To write of Vulcan, 

And in Ausonian land 
Men call'd him Mulciber, 

is poetry, but to describe a visit to Italy by saying, 

The muse gay roved the glad Hesperian round, 

is absurdity.^ To speak of the angel Raphael as "the winged Hie- 
rarch," Satan as a "mighty Paramount," and the trumpets used by 
seraphim as "the sounding alchymy " is both suitable and impressive; 
but to call birds "the glossy kind" and frozen earth "the frost-con- 
cocted glebe," or to say that streams "lead the humid maze " instead 
of "wind," is neither.^ Satan may well have "writhed him to and 
fro convolved," but why should lambs be 

This way and that convolved in friskful glee? ^ 

But, even if the subject of The Seasons had been similar to that of 
Paradise Losty Thomson, like others, would almost certainly have 
brought many discords out of Milton's mighty but complicated in- 
strument. The exquisite ear and supreme art of its inventor enabled 
him to do things with it which, if attempted by almost any one else, 
would have resulted in failure. Latinisms appear to come naturally 
to him, his inversions do not seem distorted or his unusual words far- 
fetched. Many phrases that sound absurd when transferred to the 
writings of his imitators are harmonious and beautiful in their orig- 
inal settings. The expression "vernal bloom," for example, is not 
good, but who has objected to it in Milton's great lament over his 
blindness? Much of the tumidity of The Seasons, therefore, arises 

^ P. L., i. 739-40; Liberty, i. 2. 

2 P. L., V. 468, ii. 508, 517; Spring, 617, Winter, 706, Hymn, 51. 

' P. L., vi. 328; Spring, 837 (cf. Summer, 343, and Autumn, 1183, where bees, over- 
come by sulphur fumes, are said to be "convolved and agonizing in the dust"). This 
paragraph and the preceding one repeat some things said on pages 66-8, 78-9, 83, 
above. 



I40 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

from the attempt of a Phaethon to drive the chariot of the sun. A 
great deal of Thomson's tumidity came from his adopting without 
sufficiently adapting Milton's practice. It is not a matter of this or 
that word, of a few stylistic devices or syntactical peculiarities; it is 
a question of the general character of the words employed, of the 
way in which they are used, the order in which they are placed, and 
the kind of sentences made from them. Thomson's entire concep- 
tion of the language and style of poetry seems, indeed, to have been 
moulded by Paradise Lost. 

There is no evidence that Thomson knew Cyder until 1 730, when 
in Autumn, the last of the "Seasons" to be written, he referred to 

Phillips, facetious bard, the second thou 
Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfetter'd verse, 
With British freedom sing the British song.i 

This particular "British song" was, however, widely read, and in the 
eighteen years between its pubHcation and the appearance of Winter 
would almost inevitably have come to the attention of one who cared 
for poetry of the kind. Furthermore, the similarities between the 
two works make it practically certain that there is some connection 
between them. Each discards rime, although at the time rime was 
the rule; each deals with homely country life; each owes much to 
Virgil's Georgics and to Paradise Lost;^ but, most of all, each makes 
use of the exaggerated, tumid Miltonisms which Philips had intro- 
duced into the Splendid Shilling for the sake of parody. The Seasons 
is more flowing than its predecessor and less stilted and bombastic; 
but the resemblances to Cyder are sufficiently marked to make it dif- 
ficult to determine how much Thomson derived from Milton and 
how much from Philips. In his first two unrimed pieces, and in the 
few lines we have of an early draft of Winter,^ the style is simpler and 
more direct and the language more natural than in The Seasons. 
This would indicate that Thomson deliberately stiffened his later 
verse; and, as he certainly knew Milton before writing any of these 
pieces but seems not to have been famihar with the Splendid Shilling 
whien composing his juvenile burlesque,* it appears likely that in 
making over the gorgeous Miltonic garment for work-a-day purposes 
he consciously followed Philips's practice. It may even be that he 

^ Autumn, 639-41 (text of 1730). Most later editions substitute "Pomona's" for 
"facetious." 

2 For the influence of Virgil on Thomson, see Macaulay's life, 146-7 n. In the 1750 
edition of Thomson's works Lyttelton removed the description of the orgy of food and 
drink from Autumn (482-569 of the later texts) and printed it as a separate poem, The 
Return from the Fox-Chace, a Burlesque Poem, in the Manner of Mr. Philips. 

' Letter to Dr. Cranston, September, 1725?, Poetical Works (1847), vol. i, p. xxiii. 

* Lisy's Parting with her Cat, written about 1718. 



THOMSON 141 

did not so much adapt this apparel himself as modify Philips's 
adaptation. 

Obviously, Paradise Lost and Cyder would not have exerted such 
an influence upon Thomson if they had not fallen in with his natural 
tendencies. He turned to these poems and to the Faerie Queene as 
inevitably as a flower turns to the sun; ^ yet the use which the flower 
makes of the sun's rays depends upon its own nature and environ- 
ment. The same Miltonic light that awakened Thomson fell upon 
Landor, Keats, and Wordsworth, but in them it produced very dif- 
ferent results. Thomson used inversions and other Latinisms not 
simply because Milton did so but because he liked them ; these char- 
acteristics or similar ones would have marked his poetry had Para- 
dise Lost never been written. The English epic inspired him, brought 
out what was latent in him, opened his eyes to many things he would 
otherwise have overlooked, and showed him how to get effects he de- 
sired ; but it did not originate his turgidity, it only accentuated and 
directed it. He was, as we have seen, impatient with the "wintry 
world of letters" of his own day; he wanted the color, the feeling, 
and the richness of summer. He wished to banish the drab uniform- 
ity of neo-classic poetry, to substitute imagination for wit, feeling 
for brilliance, luxuriance for precision, to appeal to the emotions 
rather than the intellect, to the heart rather than the head. His de- 
fects sprang from lack of fineness of taste and from want of skill in 
handling a strange medium. He failed to distinguish dignity from 
stiltedness, grandeur from turgidity, loftiness from pomposity; he 
failed to see that one is not always nearer to poetry by being farther 
from prose. 

These limitations were not peculiar to Thomson. Other men of 
the time. Mallet, Dyer, and Akenside, for example, had them too, 
though usually to a less degree; for dignity, splendor, and pomp of 
writing were admired then far more than they are now. In poetry 
as in dress it was a time of velvet coats, tight neck-bands, and flow- 
ing, powdered wigs. Henry Pemberton, in 1738, praised Glover's 
Leonidas for not naming such utilitarian objects as hay and straw, 
but for describing "the magazines of them in the camp of Xerxes 
... by periphrasis, as follows : 

There at his word devouring Vulcan feasts 
On all the tribute, which Thessalia's meads 
Yield to the scythe, and riots on the heaps 
Of Ceres emptied of the ripen'd grain. . . . 

* Spenser seems to have had little direct influence upon The Seasons; but his exam- 
ple, like Milton's, undoubtedly strengthened Thomson's tendencies away from the 
things for which Pope stood and in general towards ornament and profusion. 



142 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

This is a refinement," adds Pemberton, "which seems to have arisen 
by time. In Homer we often find the commonest things expressed 
by their plain names." ^ " The style of a didactic poem," Joseph 
Warton asserted a few years later, "... ought certainly to abound 
in the most bold and forcible metaphors, the most glowing and 
picturesque epithets ; it ought to be elevated and enlivened by pomp 
of numbers, and majesty of words, and by every figure that can 
lift a language above the vulgar and current expressions." ^ As 
late as 1785 John Scott, himself a pleasing poet, criticized Thomson 
for using such a "wretched prosaism" as "to tempt the trout" or 
"stealing from the barn a straw," and for speaking of birds' "streak- 
ing their wings with oil" instead of "moistening their plumage with 
an oleaginous matter." ^ Even Johnson, who hated blank verse and 
all its works, praised the diction of The Seasons, though he regarded 
it as "too exuberant." ^ But how could he have condemned it in 
view of his own pompous Latinisms and the "relaxation of his grav- 
ity" caused by Shakespeare's use of the words "peep," "blanket," 
" dun," and " knife " in a tragedy? ^ One contemporary reviewer as- 
serted that Thomson excelled "in the real sublime, in a strength and 
justness both of thought and expression^' \ ^ and the critical Swift, 
though "not over fond of " The Seasons "because . . . nothing is 
doing," did not mention its turgidity.'^ Many, to be sure, who ap- 
proved of Thomson's general practice censured some of his expres- 
sions or thought he went too far.^ Thus we read in Gibber's Lives 
(1753), "Mr. Thomson's poetical diction in the Seasons is very pe- 
culiar to him. . . . He has introduced a number of compound 
words; converted substantives into verbs, and in short has created a 
kind of new language for himself. His stile has been blamed for its 
singularity and stiffness . . . yet is it admirably fitted for descrip- 
tion," since, "though its exterior form should not be comely," it en- 
ables him to paint nature "in all its lustre." ^ 

^ Observations on Poetry, 86-7. ' Critical Essays, 316, 309, 316, 301. 

2 Works of Virgil (1753), i. 403-4. ^ Lives (ed. Hill),iii. 300. ^ Rambler, no. 168. 

* Andrew Reid , Present State of the Republick of Letters ( 1 7 28) , i. 430. The italics are 
mine. 

^ Letter to Charles Wogan, Aug. 2, 1732. 

* Joseph Warton, for example, granted that "the diction of the Seasons is some- 
times . . . turgid and obscure," but added inamediately, "yet is this poem on the 
whole . . . one of the most captivating ... in our language (Essay on Pope, 4th ed., 
1782, i. 43). In his blank- verse Enthusiast, which is itself not without turgidity, he 
praises Thomson as one "who strongly painted what he boldly thought" (Wooll's 
Biographical Memoirs of Warton, 1806, p. 117; cf. Autumn, 57-64). 

8 V. 202-3. Ill the same paragraph there is a reference to "the tow'ring sublimity of 
Mr. Thomson's stile." 



THOMSON 143 

At this time, as we know, it was an accepted principle that the 
language of poetry should be widely separated from that of prose, 
that homely words hke "blanket" or "knife," and 'terms appropri- 
ated to particular arts,' like "seam" or "mallet," "should be sunk in 
general expressions." ^ Pope and his contemporaries found Homer 
and the Bible much too simple and matter-of-fact, and therefore 
adorned them with tinsel and "raised" them with vague, high- 
sounding, inappropriate words. Even prose, under the guidance of 
Johnson, Gibbon, Burke, and their followers, returned to the tradi- 
tions of rhetorical elaboration, becoming Latinic and structurally in- 
volved. The Swan of Lichfield thought Hberty "a thousand times 
preferable to the dispiriting fetters of an unimpassioned connexion," 
and referred to language which "had every happiness of perspicuity, 
and always expressed rectitude of heart and susceptibility of taste." ^ 
That any human being, much less an important Uterary personage, 
could habitually express herself after this fashion, is far more diffi- 
cult to understand than is the turgidity of The Seasons. 

Even among Thomson's contemporaries, however, there were 
those who objected to his style and diction. Johnson, as we have 
seen, remarked mildly that it was "too exuberant," and Gibber 
acknowledged that it had been "blamed for its singularity and 
stiffness." Guriously enough, John Scott — he who favored "mois- 
tening their plumage with an oleaginous matter" — wrote that 
Thomson, "in attempting energy and dignity, produces bombast and 
obscurity; and in avoiding meanness, becomes guilty of affecta- 
tion." ^ Lyttelton and his friends were so much disturbed by the 
diction of The Seasons that in the edition of the poem which his lord- 
ship, as Thomson's literary executor, brought out in 1750 "great 
corrections" were made and "many redundancies . . . cut off."* 
The world, however, preferring the original with its redundancies, 
justified Patrick Murdoch, the poet's friend and biographer, in de- 
claring, "Gertain it is, that T[homson]'s language has been well 
receiv'd by the publick." ^ 

* Johnson, Rambler, no. 168; "Dryden," in Lives (ed. Hill), i. 433. 

* Letters, iv. 179; Memoirs of Dr. Darwin (1804), no. 
' Critical Essays (1785), 296. 

* Lyttelton's letter to Dr. Doddridge, quoted in Macaulay's Thomson, 75. See also 
above, p. 140, n. 2. 

' From an undated letter to Andrew Millar, in Wooll's Biographical Memoirs of 
Joseph Warton, 256-7. Murdoch recommended "my Lord's acquaintances ... to 
read Milton with care, and the greatest part of their objections would vanish." So late 
as 1821 Rowland Freeman {Kentish Poets, Canterbury, 1821, ii. 113) quoted the whole 
of Thomas Curteis's egregiously stilted and distorted Eirenodia (see p. 112 above), 
because it "has in many parts great merit, and is a very good specimen of the Miltomc 
style." 



144 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

The truth of this assertion is borne out not only by the remarkable 
vogue of the poem, but by the adoption, with little conscious modifi- 
cation, of the language, diction, and style of The Seasons on the part 
of most contemporary writers of blank verse. Even the cold, fastidi- 
ous Akenside made use of them, and in the unrimed work of Shen- 
stone, who lacked neither taste nor discernment, their peculiarities 
are far more conspicuous than in The Seasons itself. To most writers 
of the time these mannerisms appeared attractive in themselves as 
well as an essential feature of all pleasing blank verse, since they 
solved a difficulty which had previously seemed insurmountable, — 
how to beat into ploughshare and pruning-hook the mighty sword 
and spear that had been forged for the combats of archangels. Pre- 
vious writers, it was felt, had not done this, or, if they had, the re- 
sults were uninteresting, which came to the same thing. Most of 
these adventurers had been wrecked either in the Charybdis of flat 
prose, near which protruded the rocks of the couplet prosody, or on 
the Scylla of epic bombast; the few who escaped had, with the ex- 
ception of Philips, been lost in the great deep of oblivion. Before 
1726, therefore, authors did not know what kind of blank verse to 
write, or if they did they were unable to write it effectively and for 
that reason usually left it alone. But as soon as it was generally 
recognized that Thomson had discovered a good course they 
promptly followed him, with the result that his vices came to be so 
firmly fastened upon blank verse that they persisted almost to the 
end of the century. Indeed, the development of the poetry written 
in the measure from his time to Wordsworth's is in the main a record 
of its gradual emancipation from the faults which The Seasons 
brought into vogue. 

But it is a mistake to attribute all that is objectionable in Thom- 
son to the influence of the poetry of his day, since in point of fact his 
language and style are related to that poetry less as a result than as a 
cause. They are, as we have seen, in large part the outgrowth of his 
own natural predilections (which, it must not be forgotten, were of 
Scottish not English origin) and of the example of Milton. Some- 
thing much like them, to be sure, is to be found in the work of his 
predecessors, — in Cyder, the Splendid Shilling, and other bur- 
lesques, in translations of the classics, in epics, and in works in 
which the Deity is a character; but, aside from Cyder, such produc- 
tions obviously form a class by themselves apart from most litera- 
ture, and many of even these pieces are comparatively free from the 
exaggerated Miltonisms of later unrimed poems. It is possible, 
therefore, that if Thomson had adopted a simpler method of expres- 



THOMSON 145 

sion other writers would have done the same and eighteenth-century 
blank verse would have developed along quite different lines. Such 
a supposition, however, proceeds on the very dubious assumptions 
that a more natural blank verse could have been written effectively 
in 1726, and that, if written, it would have been popular. If Words- 
worth's simplicity seemed stupidity in 1798, what would it have been 
thought in 1726? If the strains of Tintern Abbey, Michael, and 
Alastor fell on deaf ears in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, 
what chance would Winter, in equally unadorned verse, have had a 
hundred years earlier? Furthermore, Thomson himself used a more 
direct and natural form of expression in his first efforts, but appar- 
ently saw, as every one has seen since, that it was not a success. 
Who, then, shall say he was not right in deliberately adopting a 
more ornate manner? 

''The blank verse of The Seasons," writes Mr. Beers, "... has 
been passed through the strainer of the heroic couplet." ^ Admirers 
of the poem may at first resent this criticism, but they will find more 
and more evidence of its truth as they examine the prosody of 
Thomson. He did not have a delicate ear, and probably missed 
many of the finer harmonies of Milton's verse, which, it will be re- 
membered, was in 1725 admired far more than it was understood. 
He repeatedly uses lines of the same marked cadence,^ has pauses in 
the same places in successive lines, and seems to have given no heed 
to inversions of accent, if indeed he was conscious of them. At the 
beginning of a line he, like Pope and the other classicists, frequently 
has a trochee, but with this exception there are only eleven inver- 
sions of the stress in the first three hundred lines of Summer? In the 
same passage there are, as I read it, but eighty run-over lines,* or less 

1 English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century (N. Y., 1899), iii. 

* The oft-noted examples of this habit, 

And Cancer reddens with the solar blaze, 
And Egj^t joys beneath the spreading wave, 
And Ocean trembles for his green domain, 
And Mecca saddens at the long delay, 
And Thul6 bellows through her utmost isles, 
And the sky saddens with the gathered storm 
{Summer, 44, 821, 859, 979, 1168, Winter, 228), can hardly be used, as Mr. Saintsbury 
suggests {English Prosody, ii. 479), to emphasize the ends of paragraphs, since the first 
and last instances quoted occur near the beginnings of paragraphs. Cf . also Summer, 
833, and Mr. Macaulay's discussion of the subject in his Thomson, 166-7. 

' So, at least, says Leon Morel in his James Thomson (Paris, 1895) , 470. I find even 
fewer. 

* According to Robertson's edition, 108 lines are without punctuation at the end. 



146 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

than twenty-seven per cent, as against forty-five per cent in Para- 
dise Lost and about six per cent in the Essay on Man. Much of the 
prosodic variety of The Seasons comes from a slighting of the 
stresses, one of which is passed over in nearly every line. The cesura 
is not managed so well; for, though it falls in or after the first foot 
more often than it does in Paradise Lost, it is usually near the middle 
of the line.^ Occasionally Thomson has such a line as 

Flames through the nerves, and boils along the veins, 



or 



Bright as the skies, and as the season keen,^ 



which might have come from Pope's Essay on Criticism. Much 
more common, however, are two or three lines that fall into unrimed 
couplets or triplets, a number of which now and then come together 
to form a passage like the following: 

Yet found no times, in all the long research, 
So glorious, or so base, as those he proved, 
In which he conquered, and in which he bled. 
Nor can the muse the gallant Sidney pass, 
The plume of war! with early laurels crowned. 
The lover's myrtle and the poet's bay. 
A Hampden too is thine, illustrious land! 
Wise, strenuous, firm, of unsubmitting soul.* 

The truth seems to be that when off his guard Thomson relapsed 
into writing not metrical paragraphs but separate lines, and that he 
had to exert himself to vary his pauses and to avoid a slight break 
after every tenth syllable. The freer prosody was unquestionably 
what he preferred, but the end-stopped Hne vrith a medial cesura 
and rare trochaic substitutions was, so to speak, in his blood and in- 
evitably showed itself. How well he succeeded in freeing himself 
from it we may see by comparing his juvenile blank verse, in which 
almost every line stands by itself, with his later work. He did much 
better than most writers of the time, because he had a clearer under- 
standing of Milton's prosody and a heartier Hking for it. 

Thomson's six or eight other unrimed poems — one of which, 
Liberty, contains nearly thirty-four hundred fines — need not detain 

' In the first fifty lines of Summer I find the cesuras occurring as follows : 1-5 (i. e. 
five times after the first syllable), 2-5, ^-2,, 4-11, 5-12, 6-11, 7-5, 8-2, 9-0. Compare 
their distribution in the first fifty lines of the Essay on Man: 1-3, 2-7, 3-2, 4-11, 5-18, 
6-7, 7-4, 8-4, 9-0. 

* Spring, 1104; Winter, 703 (cf. 485, 677, 836-7, and Liberty, ii. 24, 26, 31, 37, 40, 
etc.). 

' Summer, 1508-15. The prosody of the preceding forty lines is much the same. 



THOMSON 147 

us long.^ They attracted few readers when they appeared and have 
had no wilHng ones since. Historians of hterature and biographers 
of the poet have felt constrained to say something about the pieces 
and have tried to find something good to say, but it has been wasted 
labor. Johnson records that he attempted to read Liberty when it 
came out, but "soon desisted" and "never tried again." ^ Those 
who have tried again have usually desisted as soon. When Thomson 
left nature inspiration left him, and in Liberty even the descriptions 
are tame. Of course the poems contain a number of excellent lines 
and some good passages ; but on the whole they have very few of the 
virtues of The Seasons and all of its vices, — the roaring of the Brit- 
ish Hon, the obvious moralizing, the shallow pessimism, the fulsome 
commendation of friends, the tumidity, and the contorted word- 
order. They tend towards flattery and didacticism, and even when 
they spring in part from a worthy impulse the impulse has not been 
so deeply felt by their author as to give rise to poetry. Thomson's 
mind may have been in them, but his heart was not; and his mind, 
like that of many another bard, was by no means remarkable. It is 
to be regretted that he did not rise above his fellow-mortals by recog- 
nizing this fact and by realizing the questionable efficacy of moraliz- 
ing in verse; but if he had done so he would not have been James 
Thomson. 

It is easy to find fault with Thomson's work. His painting of na- 
ture is never ennobled by intensity of spiritual feeling; he has many 
tedious passages and more errors of taste both in subject-matter and 
in expression, and a hasty reading brings these defects into promi- 
nence. The poem (or extracts from it) is frequently studied for one 
purpose or another; but since large portions are seldom read for 
their own sake, and since those who judge it are often more fastidious 
than robust in their taste and rarely are so famihar with it that the 
faults no longer obscure the virtues, Thomson suffers much from 
being damned with faint, patronizing praise. One may even be tol- 
erably well acquainted with his work and yet remember little save 
its obvious merits and defects, and consequently may think that the 

1 See Bibl. 1, 1713 w., c. 1718 w., 1727, 1729, 1734, 1737; App. B, 1726. The first 
two are juveniles, the second being an unsuccessful attempt at the mock-heroic. That 
to James Delacour, which is omitted from most editions of the poet's works, was first 
printed in the London Magazine for November, 1734, over the signature "J. Thomp- 
son," and was attributed in Delacour's Poems (Cork, 1778, p. 54) to "J. Thomson, 
author of the Seasons." Mr. Robertson (Oxford edition of Thomson, pp. 457, 462) 
gives several reasons for thinking that the Poem to the Memory of Mr. Congreve, which 
has on slender grounds been attributed to Thomson, is not really his. The abrupt, 
«jaculatory style seems to me not that of The Seasons. 

^ Lives (ed. Hill), iii. 301. 



148 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

author always paints with a broad brush and only the beauties 
which every one sees. But let such a reader return to The Seasons 
with a fresh and open mind and he will be struck with the closeness 
of observation it frequently exhibits, its fine feeling for shy loveli- 
ness in nature and for the "beauty, which, as Milton sings, hath ter- 
ror in it." He can hardly fail to admire the poet's healthy manliness 
and human sympathy, the excellence of many of his single lines, and 
the sonorous pomp, breadth, and Byronic power of his larger pic- 
tures. He will have a far better understanding of the eighteenth cen- 
tury after he has come to see these qualities in Thomson and to 
realize that they are features of a piece which, from the days of Pope 
and Young, through the dictatorship of Johnson and the increas- 
ingly romantic times of Gray, Cowper, and Burns, and even to the 
stirring years of Wordsworth, Shelley, Lamb, and Hazlitt, was the 
most popular and perhaps the most influential poem in English. 



CHAPTER VII 

YOUNG 

One of the earliest and most important results of Thomson's popu- 
larizing blank verse was the appearance, in 1742, of the first part of 
The Complaint, or Night Thoughts, by Edward Young. There is, to 
be sure, no proof that it was Thomson's example which led his fel- 
low-poet to use the new measure; but since The Seasons was at the 
time in the flush of its first popularity, and since The Complaint is 
very different in character from anything its author had written be- 
fore, there must have been some connection, and perhaps not a slight 
one, between the two works. 

It is Young's good fortune that he is little read. Most lovers of 
poetry who know the eighteenth century only through anthologies 
think of The Seasons, the Night Thoughts, and The Task as estheti- 
cally on the same low plane, an estimate that does great injustice to 
Thomson and Cowper, who, notwithstanding their defects, had genu- 
ine inspiration. Young lacked this and had little to offer in its 
place. The Night Thoughts is one of the dullest and falsest poems 
that ever achieved fame. It is rhetorical and declamatory in style, 
unpoetic in both conception and expression, commonplace in 
thought, sentimental, insincere, and lugubrious in its insistent re- 
ligion. To the modern reader the hollow theatricality of its parade 
of gloom is particularly repellent because of the smug piety which is 
supposed to inspire it. The poem excites no admiration for its 
author, who, one is not surprised to learn, spent the best part of 
his life seeking those tinsel trappings which it belittles. The gross 
flattery contained in the dedications of his works and in his poetic 
references to persons of influence prepare us to hear that for years he 
danced attendance on two of the most profligate and unscrupulous 
noblemen of the time, and that he even stooped to beg aid of the 
king's mistress for advancement in the church ! ^ There can be no 
question that the gloom of his poetry is in part due to disappointed 

^ For an admirable analysis of Young's character, see George Eliot's essay, Worldli- 
ness and Other-worldliness. H. C. Shelley's brief for Young {Life and Letters, 1914) 
seems to me to avoid, or to touch lightly, on everything in the poet's life or writings that 
would produce an unfavorable impression. 



I50 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

ambition, and that his scorn of worldly pleasures and honors rings 
hollow from a man who strove hard to obtain them. 

Young's first published volume appeared when he was thirty, and 
from that time until he was fifty-nine he issued a book of verse 
nearly every year. With the exception of a few stanzaic odes and 
three tragedies, all these poems are written in couplets of the most 
pronounced pseudo-classic type. The best of them, and in some re- 
spects the best of all his work, is Love of Fame, the Universal Passion 
(1725-8). The seven satires that make up this volume possess a 
finish, brilliance, and epigrammatic point which render them at 
times but little inferior to those of the "wasp of Twickenham," 
which they antedate.^ Quite fittingly, therefore. Young's last work 
in the couplet consisted of two laudatory "Epistles to Mr. Pope" 

(1730)- 

Between the satires and his later writings lies "a gulf profound as 
that Serbonian bog"; for, after fifty-nine years of life and thirty in 
the service of the couplet. Young suddenly threw in his lot with the 
poetical insurgents by renouncing "childish shackles and tinkling 
sounds" ^ and all that went with them. The Night Thoughts, his 
most famous production, is in blank verse. No mere change of 
theme was responsible for his transferred allegiance, but a real 
change of heart. "What we mean by ' blank verse,' " he wrote at the 
age of seventy-six, "is, verse unf alien, uncursed; verse reclaimed, re- 
enthroned in the true language of the gods: who never thundered, 
nor suffered their Homer to thunder, in rime. . . . Must rime, then, 
say you, be banished? I wish the nature of our language could bear 
its entire expulsion; but our lesser poetry stands in need of a tolera- 
tion for it." 3 

Few men of sixty undertake new things, still fewer gain a mastery 
of them. No wonder, then, that Young never learned to write good 
blank verse. In his thirty years of practice he had acquired admi- 
rable dexterity in handling the heroic couplet, but his fingers had be- 
come so adapted to the material with which they worked that they 
involuntarily shaped the new product with the old touch. In the 
early eighteenth century, good blank verse and good couplets stood 
leagues apart and generally implied quite dissimilar conceptions of 
poetry, much as the tango and the court minuet are not merely 

1 According to Pope's editor (Works, Elwin-Courthope ed., vi. 340 n.), the Essay on 
Man, which was published anonymously, was thought to be by Young, and the Dublin 
reprint was advertised with his name. 

* Conjectures on Original Composition (1759, reprinted by M. W. Steinke, 1917), 58. 

3 lb. 58-9, 65. 



YOUNG 151 

different dances but expressions of different civilizations. Young 
was too old to gain facility in the free, new measure; his verse always 
tends to be choppy and ejaculatory/ to fall into a series of individual 
lines or to read like prose. The following is a fair example : 

Each night we die, 
Each morn are born anew: Each day, a life! 
And shall we kill each day? If trifling kills; 
Sure vice must butcher. O what heaps of slain 
Cry out for vengeance on us! Time destroy 'd 
Is suicide, where more than blood is spilt. 
Time flies, death urges, knells call, heaven invites, 
Hell threatens: All exerts; in effort, all.* 

Surely there is nothing of Milton here, or in hundreds of similar lines 
in the Night Thoughts. Yet there can be no question of Young's 
familiarity with Paradise Lost or of his willingness to borrow phrases 
from it.^ "Milton! thee," he exclaimed, "ah could I reach your 
strain 1 " ^ But there was the trouble, — he couldn't. Even if he had 
wanted to copy the style and versification of Paradise Lost, he could 
not have freed himself from the shackles of the couplet. He had 
written lines and pairs of lines too long to roll on "in full flow, 
through the various modulations of masculine melody";^ he had 
been brilliant and incisive too long to become sonorous and majestic. 
Besides, since the Night Thoughts is a series of versified sermons, its 
style is probably similar to that Young employed in the pulpit. De- 
clamatory, ejaculatory, abounding in short rhetorical questions, 
direct appeals, and exclamatory words and phrases, it is quite unlike 
the stately involutions of the Miltonic sentence. Hence the influ- 
ence of the epic upon the Night Thoughts may have been greater than 
appears at first sight. The extent of a change depends not so much 

1 This is due in part to the punctuation. In forty lines of book ix there are 33 marks 
of exclamation, and in thirteen lines 15 marks of interrogation; in eight Unas of book vii 
there are 10 marks of interrogation and one of exclamation; and spots no less bristling 
may be opened to almost anywhere in the work. 

^ Night Tlwughts, p. 24. As no edition of Young with numbered lines is easily acces- 
sible, the references will be to the pages in the Aldine edition of the Poetical Works 
(1852). 

^ This is shown in his epigram on Voltaire in defense of the allegory of Sin and Death 
in Paradise Lost (see Works, Aldine ed., vol. i, p. xxxiv, n.); in his remark that "these 
violent and tumultuous authors put him in mind of a passage of Milton, ii. 539" {ih. pp. 
xxxvii-xxxviii, n.) ; in his prefixing an extract from Paradise Lost (ix. 896-900) to the 
fifth satire of his Love of Fame, and in definitely referring to an incident in the epic at the 
close of the sixth satire and again in the Night Thoughts {Works, ii. 95, 132-3, i. 124); 
but most of aU in his numerous borrowings from Milton (see Appendix A, below). 

* Night Thoughts, p. 15. 

' Conjectures on Original Composition (reprint of 191 7), 58. 



152 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 



upon where one is as upon how far one has come, and Young had 
covered no small distance. Remote from Paradise Lost as is much of 
his lugubrious preachment, it is leagues away from his previous 
poems and from his blank- verse dramas. 

Furthermore, although the passages which do not recall Milton 
constitute the larger part of the Night Thoughts, they are by no means 
the whole of it. Indeed, it would be as difficult to find ten consecu- 
tive lines in the poem that have no echo of Paradise Lost as not to 
find the hundreds of places where that echo is unmistakable. Yet 
even in these last the resemblance soon fades or disappears, for not 
many passages of any length are dominated by the Miltonic style 
and diction. That is, although many passages show the influence of 
Paradise Lost as plainly as this one, few show it for so many lines : 

In grandeur terrible, all heaven descends! 

And gods, ambitious, triumph in his train. 

A swift archangel, with his golden wing, 

As blots and clouds, that darken and disgrace 

The scene divine, sweeps stars and suns aside. 

And now, all dross remov'd, heaven's own pure day. 

Full on the confines of our ether, flames. 

While (dreadful contrast!) far, how far beneath! 

Hell, bursting, belches forth her blazing seas, 

And storms sulphureous; her voracious jaws 

Expanding wide, and roaring for her prey.^ 

Here are obvious Miltonisms and plenty of them, but they come out 
more clearly in contrast vdth what we may assume to have been 
Young's natural, uncontaminated blank verse, — the colorless, rhe- 
torical prose which he cut up into five-foot lengths for his tragedies : 

He can't persuade his heart to wed the maid. 
Without your leave; and that he fears to ask 
In perfect tenderness: I urg'd him to it, 
Knowing the deadly sickness of his heart, 
Your overflowing goodness to your friend, 
Your wisdom, and despair yourself to wed her; 
I wrung a promise from him he would try; 
And now I come a mutual friend to both.^ 

A comparison of these two quotations shows that the differences 
between them are due mainly to the presence, in the first passage, of 
many characteristics distinctive of Paradise Lost. The most obvi- 
ous of these, inversion, though common throughout the Night 
Thoughts, is less frequent and much less noticeable than in most 
blank verse of the time, for the sentences are so short and so broken 

1 Page 230. 2 The Revenge (1721), II. i {Works, 1762, ii. 131). 



n 



YOUNG 153 

that elaborate inversion is impossible.^ But Young seldom writes 
many lines without involving his words in some kind of knot, to the 
confusion of the reader. Next to inversion, the most fruitful source 
of difficulties is the omission of words that are usually expressed. He 
says, for example, "Enthusiastic this?" instead of "Is this enthusi- 
astic?", and "All exerts, in effort, all," which seems to mean 
"Everything exerts itself." How frequent such omissions are at 
times, and how much obscurity they cause, may be seen from this 
passage: 

Because, in man, the glorious dreadful power, 

Extremely to be pain'd, or blest, for ever. 

Duration gives importance; swells the price. 

An angel, if a creature of a day. 

What would he be? A trifle of no weight; 

Or stand, or fall; no matter which; he's gone.'' 

Very often it is parenthetical expressions that impede the reader's 
progress. Such phrases, whether within marks of parenthesis or not, 
have an unmistakably Miltonic effect, although they are far more 
common with Young than with Milton: 

Or, spider-like, spin out our precious all, 

Our more than vitals spin (if no regard 

To great futurity) in curious webs 

Of subtle thought, and exquisite design; 

(Fine net-work of the brain!) to catch a fly! 

The momentary buzz of vain renown! 

A name! a mortal immortality! 

Or (meaner still!) instead of grasping air. . . .' 

Two stylistic features of the Night Thoughts have less significance 
because they also occur in the work of Milton's predecessors. One is 
the use of a series of words in the same construction: 

War, famine, pest, volcano, storm, and fire. 

Rocks, desarts, frozen seas, and burning sands: 
Wild haunts of monsters, poisons, stings, and death. 

Unraptur'd, unexalted, uninflam'd. 

Triune, unutterable, unconceiv'd. 

All regions, revolutions, fortunes, fates.* 

' It is rare, for example, to find an inversion so long and elaborate as that in the 
fourth and fifth lines of the first extract, — "As blots . . . divine," which belongs after 
"aside." 

^ Page 170. 

' Page 117. On page 27 there are three in six lines, and on page 212 two in three. 

* Pages 8,10 (cf. 252, "Seas, rivers, mountains," etc. , and P. L.,n. 621-2), 129, 
293, 293- 



154 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

The other trait, repetition of a word or a phrase, is much more fre- 
quent in Young than in Milton, and, as will be seen from these in- 
stances, is often more elaborate : 

What pleads Lorenzo for his high-priz'd sports? 

He pleads time's num'rous blanks; he loudly pleads. 

For why should souls immortal, made for bliss, 
E'er wish (and wish in vain!) that souls could die? 
What ne'er can die, Oh! grant to live; and crown 
The wish.* 

The respects in which the language of the Night Thoughts departs 
from ordinary usage are noted in M. Thomas's admirable study of 
the poet.^ It may be interesting, as an illustration of how much 
Young's diction owes to Milton's, to know that every one of these 
differences is included in the list of characteristics of Paradise Lost 
which I had compiled before making any study of Young, and before 
even knowing of the existence of the French work.^ The similarity 
in language cannot be accidental, for the resemblance does not exist 
in the poet's earHer writings. *'Tant qu' il se rattacha a I'ecole neo- 
classique anglaise," writes M. Thomas,^ "Young suivit I'exemple des 
chefs de cette ecole, ainsi que le prouve une etude attentive de ses 
premieres oeuvres. Comme Dryden et Pope, il redoute le neolo- 
gisme ou du moins en use peu. . . . Mais quand on passe aux Nuits, 
les conditions changent sensiblement . . . il s'octroie une liberte de 
plus en plus grande a mesure qu'il avance dans son travail." 

The language of the Night Thoughts diverges most strikingly from 
that of the poetry of the day in employing unusual words from the 
Greek and Latin, many of which Young borrowed directly.^ "He 
seems to think with apothecaries," remarked Pope, "that Album 
Graecum is better than an ordinary stool." ^ M. Thomas gives " ter- 
raqueous," "optics" (eyes), "defecate," "feculence," "manumit," 
"indagators," "conglobed," "fucus," " concertion " ; ^ I have no- 
ticed "fuliginous," "gnomons," "plausive," "obliquities," "ebul- 
lient," "elance," "tenebrious," "turbant," "intervolv'd." » Young 

^ Pages 17, 179. 

* Le Poke Edward Young, Etude sur sa Vie et ses Oeuvres (Paris, 1901). 
^ See above, chapter iv. 

* Pages 390-91. 

^ Some of them he may have taken from Milton, as "ethereal," "nectareous," 
"oozy," "magnific": pp. 173 (also 198, 222, 225, 247, etc.), 206, 229, 250. 

' Quoted by Thomas, p. 391, n. 5. 

^ Thomas, pp. 391-2; Young, pp. 10, 19, 30 (cf. 261, "defecate from sense"), 32 
(and 69), 72, 100, 166 (cf. P. L. vii. 239), 196, 267. 

8 Pages 25, 28, 62, 191, 221, 244, 254, 261, 264 (cf. P. L., v. 623). 



YOUNG 155 

also follows Thomson and Milton in using some words in their orig- 
inal but obsolete meanings: "flow redundant, like Meander," "in- 
cumbent weight," "each option" in the human heart, "obnoxious" 
to storm, an "animal ovation" (animal joy), "eliminate my spirit, 
give it range," "ardours" of soul, "ardent with gems," planets 
"without error rove," the "tacit doctrine" of God's works, "erect 
thine eye," "night's radiant scale" (ladder).^ Like them, too, he 
makes new words out of those in common use, as "entenders," 
"bestorms," "re- thundered," "resorbed," "necromantics," "un- 
coift," "rationality," "displosion," and "prehbation." ^ M. 
Thomas calls attention to Young's habit of manufacturing negative 
words, like "uncreate" and "disinvolve," and especially negative 
adjectives, like "unabsurd," "unadept," "insuppressive;^ I have 
noticed "unrefunding," "unprecarious," "unbottomed," "insalu- 
brious," "unanxious," "unarrived," "unupbraided," "unlost," 
"unmysterious," "un- terrestrial," ■* and a dozen similar formations. 
Another characteristic of Paradise Lost frequently met with is what 
appears to be a dipt form of the participle, particularly from verbs 
in -ate : " souls elevate," " satiate of his journey," the mind's "corru- 
gate, expansive make," God's works "how complicate," Scripture 
"uncorrupt by man." ^ 

Not the least conspicuous of Young's Miltonisms is his interchange 
of the parts of speech. Sometimes he forces a verb into service as a 
noun, as "give thy thoughts a ply," "appall'd with one amaze," 
"thy nocturnal rove," "an overwhelm Of wonderful," "nature . . . 
gave A make to man ... A make set upright," "the deep disclose 
Of . . . nature." ^ Sometimes he reverses the process, as when he 
speaks of a night "that glooms us," of passions that "tempest hu- 
man life," of " unprecarious flows of vital joy " ; or when he says that 
"heaven's dark concave" shall "urn all human race," or the shades 
of night "antidote the pestilential earth." ^ Participles from such 
noun-verbs appear in "this escutcheon'd world," "starr'd and plan- 

1 Pages 63 (cf. 256, a garden "redundant" in fruit), 174 (cf. 259), 183 (and 184), 
187 (cf. P. L., ix. 170, 1094), 220, 243, 244, 256, 258, 264, 267, 276. Cf. Thomas, pp. 

392-3. 

2 Pages 31, 69, 170, 187, 192, 200, 203, 249, 296. 

' Thomas, p. 394; Young, pp. 174, 233, 153, 244, 149. 

* Pages 162, 202 (and 211), 206, 212, 217, 234, 246, 249, 250, 277. On one page I 
found four such adjectives in four lines. 

' Pages 25 (cf. 250, "things more elevate," 261, "minds elevate," 59, "minds 
create"), 240, 266, 267, 244. 

* Pages 27, 234 (cf. 167, "redouble this amaze"), 245, 245, 251 (cf. 27, "Man's make 
incloses the sure seeds of death"), 272. 

^ Pages 26, 140, 202, 162, 265. 



156 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

eted inhabitants," ''basin'd rivers." ^ Occasionally an adjective is 
raised to the dignity of a verb, as when hope "serenes" man's heart, 
a face "consummates bUss," a thought "shallows thy profound," or 
footsteps are " foul'd in hell " ; ^ and once in a while a noun sinks into 
an adjective, as when man is called "the tale of narrative old 
time."^ Adjectives sometimes serve as adverbs: "muffled deep," 
"flow redundant," "spontaneous rise," "tumultuous rise," "impet- 
uous pour," "let loose, alternate . . . rush Swift and tempestu- 
ous," "new awak'd," "deeply stamps . . . Indelible," "if man 
hears obedient," "refining gradual," "rich endow'd." * 

But it is by turning adjectives into nouns that Young most fre- 
quently ' confounds grammatical functions.' Almost every page has 
instances as ridiculous as these: "that awful independent on to- 
morrow," "subtilize the gross into refin'd," " trifle with tremendous " 
and "yawn o'er the fate of infinite," "th' irrationals," "reason is 
man's peculiar," "much Of amiable," "the world's no neuter," "the 
moist of human frame," "the dark profound," "this obscure terres- 
trial," "the steep of heaven," "the more of wonderful," "the grand 
of nature," "mind. For which alone inanimate was made," "what 
of vast," "the sublime of things," "deity breaks forth In inconceiv- 
ables to men," "the dark of matter," 

Thy lofty sinks, and shallows thy profound, 
And straitens thy diffusive.^ 

As to the compound epithets that are common in Paradise Lost but 
rare in Young's rimtd pieces, "Ton remarque sans peine que notre 
auteur en est relativement prodigue dans ses Nuits." ^ Here are a 
few that he uses: "hair-hung," "breeze-shaken," "dark-prison'd," 
"heart-buried," "high-flusht," "heaven-lighted," "soft-suspended," 
"heaven-labour'd," "heaven-assum'd," "wide-consuming," "all- 
proKfic," "all-providential," "freighted-rich," "sure-returning," 
"earth-created," "high-bloom'd," "far-travell'd," "hundred- 
gated," "new-blazing." ^ 

* Pages 26, 248, 252. 2 Pages 181, 242, 248, 279 (cf. 266, "foul'd with self"). 
^ Page 185. 

* Pages 41, 63, 83, 140 (cf. 165, "tumultuous driven"), 211, 229, 264, 282, 284, 
288, 292. 

' Pages 25 (cf. 287, "all of awful, night presents ... of awful much, to both"), 78, 
98 (cf. 245, "that infinite of space, With infinite of lucid orbs replete"), 173, 180 (cf. 
P. L., vii. 368), 186, 193, 228, 23s (also 263, and cf. 267, "emerge from thy profound," 
280, "the more profound of God," and P. L.,n. 980), 243, 247, 250, 250, 251-2, 252 (cf. 
273, "the vast of being"), 255, 283, 292, 248. 

* Thomas, p. 401. 

^ Pages 24, 24, 25, 25, 27 (and 196), 36, 41. 42, 42, 42, 56, 130, iSi, 161, 231, 236, 244, 
252, 297. 



YOUNG 157 

In his prosody, as might be expected from his long experience with 
the couplet, Young departs widely from Milton's usage. Instead of 
sweeping his readers along with the *' long-commingling diapason" 
of Paradise Lost, he jolts them over series of exclamations and ejacu- 
lations. On a page of thirty-four Hues, only five or six on an average 
are run-over, and in some cases only two or three ; usually not more 
than seven lines end even with commas, the remaining twenty-two 
being cut off from their fellows by semicolons, colons, periods, or 
marks of exclamation or interrogation. The Night Thoughts is over- 
punctuated, to be sure; some of its points might be dispensed with 
and commas substituted for fully a third of the rest, to the clarifica- 
tion of its meaning and the elimination of part of its jerkiness. Yet 
the punctuation is not altogether to blame; for on the first pages 
that I open to very few of the full stops (periods and question- or ex- 
clamation-marks) , with which exactly half the lines end, could be 
omitted or changed so as to let the sense run over. One feature of 
Milton's prosody Young did adopt, — the extensive use of those 
strong pauses within the Une which were anathema to the Augus- 
tans, and to Young himself so long as he wrote in rime.^ Yet, as 
these pauses usually occur near the middle of the Une, where (as in 
the couplets of the day) most of his cesuras fall, and as his lines are 
usually not run-over, the effect of his prosody is rarely Miltonic. 

What determined his versification was not the desire for flow, 
for beauty or variety of rhythm, but his staccato style and his 
penchant for aphorisms. The Night Thoughts is unusually quotable, 
and for nearly a century its gnomic fines were in everybody's mouth: 

Tir'd Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep. 

Procrastination is the thief of time. 

All men think all men mortal, but themselves. 

Blessings brighten as they take their flight. 

Wishing, of all employments, is the worst. 

By night an atheist half-believes a God. 

Death loves a shining mark. 

A man of pleasure is a man of pains. ^ 

In thus transferring to blank verse the epigrammatic terseness of the 
couplet. Young was making more of an innovation than is commonly 

^ Instances of these strong internal pauses, which often make a separate sentence of 
each half-line, will be found on page 151 above. The Monthly Review (1776, liv. 309) 
declared that in point of versification the Night Thoughts was "more faulty than any 
other composition of acknowledged merit in the class of English poetry." 

^ Pages I, 13, 14, zz, 54, 83, 107, 206. 



158 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

realized; for, from the very nature of Milton's prosody and the 
character of his epic, there are few quotable lines in Paradise Lost, 
and the same is true of Cyder, The Seasons, and the other unrimed 
poems of the period. Now quotability, always an asset, was a real 
step forward at a time when readers had been trained by Augustan 
poetry to expect it; and writers of blank verse were not slow in tak- 
ing the hint. Even the conversational Cowper (who likewise had a 
long preliminary training in rime) introduced many sententious lines 
into The Task. But it is not through quotability alone that Young 
helped to bring the couplet and blank verse closer together. His 
more direct style, his short sentences, his strong medial cesuras and 
end-stopped lines, his freedom from the elaborate Miltonic involu- 
tions and inversions, — his very defects, it should be noticed, — 
were all away from Milton and towards Pope. Little as we may like 
these features of the Night Thoughts, they were of service in the de- 
velopment of blank verse. The task of the eighteenth century was 
to hammer down Milton's style, which, Hke Lucifer's shield, was of 
''ethereal temper, massy, large, and round," into something less 
glorious but more usable, something better adapted to human na- 
ture's daily needs. In this cause no one did more than Young. 

For the vogue of the Night Thoughts was tremendous. At least 
thirty-four editions, pubHshed either separately or in Young's works, 
appeared in the second half of the eighteenth century, and the poem 
made something of a sensation when translated into French (Robes- 
pierre is said to have carried a copy in his pocket during the Revolu- 
tion), besides having a triumphal progress through Germany.^ Dr. 
Johnson, who preferred Young's description of night to either Shake- 
speare's or Dryden's, agreed that the Night Thoughts was "one of the 
few poems in which blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but 
with disadvantage." ^ Burke committed many passages of it to 
memory,^ and even the fastidious Horace Walpole thought that in 
the author's "most frantic rhapsodies" there were "innumerable 
fine things." ^ 

What heav'n-born Seraph gave thy Muse its fire? 

queried one bard; ^ another declared, 

> See Thomas's Young, p. 539; and J. L. Kind's Young in Germany (N. Y., 1906). 

2 "Young," in Lives (ed. Hill), iii. 395; Boswell's Johnson (ed. Hill), iv. 42-3, n. 7 
(and cf. V. 269-70); cf. also Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes (1786), 58-9. 

3 Moulton's Library of Literary Criticism, iii. 489. 
* Letter to the Earl of Strafford, July 5, 1757. 

' C. Graham, in Univ. Mag. (1785), Ixxvii. 98; cf. William Thompson's Sickness, 
iii. 412-16. 



YOUNG 159 

The starry host put back the dawn, 
Aside their harps ev'n Seraphs flung 
To hear thy sweet Complaint, O Young; ^ 

and many shared this admiration who were unable to express it, — 
devout souls like Bowles's mother, who revered the Night Thoughts 
"next to God's own Word." ^ Considerable evidence could, in 
truth, be adduced in support of Samuel J. Pratt's assertion that "no 
composition can . . . boast a greater number of readers." ' Nu- 
merous readers implied some imitators, and these Young had. Even 
before the last books of the poem had been published, other Night 
Thoughts J Day Thoughts, and pieces "after the manner of Dr. 
Young" or "in imitation of" him or "occasioned by" his work were 
being composed.^ Most of his followers, to be sure, did not acknowl- 
edge their indebtedness so frankly as this, but writers continued 
even into the nineteenth century to copy the poem or to be influ- 
enced by it. 

These pieces that are patterned more or less after the Night 
Thoughts do not sound particularly Miltonic, as, for that matter, 
their original usually does not. Yet Young was far more influenced 
by Paradise Lost than were most of the men who wrote verse like his, 
for he had more to unlearn. The author of Conjectures on Original 
Composition was hardly the man to copy any one. Had he not as- 
serted as early as 1730, "No Man can be like Pindar, by imitating 
any of his particular Works; any more than Hke Raphael, by copying 
the Chartoons. The Genius and Spirit of such great Men must be 
collected from the whole; and when thus we are possess 'd of it, we 
must exert its Energy in Subjects and Designs of our own. . , . 
Nothing so unlike as a Close Copy, and a Noble Original"? * And 

^ James Grainger, Solitude, in "Dodsley's Miscellany," 1755, iv. 235. 

^ Bowles, Banwell Hill, ii. 80-89. 

' Observations on the Night Thoughts (1776), quoted in Crit. Rev. xli. 65. "He was 
indeed a favourite author from my childhood," Pratt said of Young {ih.); and 
Samuel Rogers, who was born in 1763, remarked, "In my youthful days Young's 
Night-Thoughts was a very favourite book, especially with ladies" {T able-Talk, ed. 
Dyce, 1856, p. 35). 

* See Bibl. I, 1745 (Davies), 1752 (anon.), 1753 n., 1754 n., 1755 (anon.), 1757-64, 
1760 (Newcomb), 1765 ("T. L." and Letchworth), 1775 (anon.), 1791 (Philpot). Two 
of these are curious, — a stupid blank- verse rendering of James Hervey's prose Medi- 
tations and Contemplations, and a "poetical version" of one of Young's prose "moral 
contemplations " (cf. above, p. in, n. 2). James Foot {Penseroso, 1771, preface) says 
that he used blank verse because Young and "most of the celebrated writers of the 
present times" used it. Young is cleverly parodied by William Whitehead (see 
Young's Works, 1854 vol. i, pp. Ixi-lxii) and by John Kidgell {The Card, 1755, i. 
241-2). 

* Preface to his Imperium Pelagi. 



l6o THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

twenty-nine years later, in his Conjectures, had he not again declared, 
** It is by a sort of noble contagion, from a general familiarity with 
their writings, and not by any particular sordid theft, that we can be 
the better for those who went before us"?^ We have seen that 
Young knew Paradise Lost well, and in view of the wide gulf between 
his early and his late verse there can be little doubt as to the ''noble 
contagion" he caught from it; but the "particular thefts" are so 
few in comparison with those in the blank verse of his contemporaries 
(in The Seasons, for example) that he may have been unconscious, or 
almost unconscious, of them. What Milton did for him was to rouse 
him, to free him from the shackles of rime, to get him out of the neo- 
classic rut. Young was wise enough not to slip from one rut into an- 
other, not to become a slave to his new guide. The vehicle he hacked 
out for himself, though perhaps a poor thing, was his own, and it was 
of no little help to those who came later. 

* Reprint of 191 7, p. 49. 



I 



CHAPTER VIII 

COWPER 

There were many men in the eighteenth century who knew their 
Milton as well as our grandmothers knew their Bible, — Gray, 
Thomas Warton, Philips, and perhaps Pope, besides such minor not- 
ables, now forgotten, as Jonathan Richardson, Thomas Mollis, Leon- 
ard Welsted, and George Hardinge.^ Yet it is doubtful if any of 
these men were better acquainted with Milton's writings than was 
the poet Cowper. His editor. Canon Benham, asserts, *'He appears 
to have known Milton nearly by heart"; ^ and he himself wrote, 
" Few people have studied Milton more, or are more familiar with his 
poetry, than myself." ^ This familiarity, as we learn from The Task, 
began in his early years : 

Then Milton had indeed a poet's charms: 
New to my taste, his Paradise surpassed 
The struggling efforts of my boyish tongue 
To speak its excellence; I danced for joy. 
I marvelled much that, at so ripe an age 
As twice seven years, his beauties had then first 
Engaged my wonder, and, admiring still 
And still admiring, with regret supposed 
The joy half lost because not sooner found.* 

And of Allegro and Penseroso he said, "I remember being so charmed 
with [them] when I was a boy that I was never weary of them." ^ It 
was this early love for Milton, combined with an extraordinary ver- 
bal memory,^ that made him know the poems so well. 

^ On the minor writers, see above, pp. 6-7. 

^ Globe ed., p. xxv. 

' To Clotworthy Rowley, Oct. 22, 1791. 

* iv. 709-17. 

' Letter to William Unwin, Jan. 17, 1782. 

* See, for example, his letter to Unwin, May i, 1779, "Not having the poem, and not 
having seen it these twenty years, I had much ado to recollect it"; he then quotes from 
memory the four stanzas of his Latin translation of Prior's Chloe and Euphelia. Later he 
tells the same friend (presumably in August, 1786, see Wright's edition of the Corre- 
spondence, iii. 89), "I did not indeed read many of Johnson's Classics; those of estab- 
lished reputation are so fresh in my memory, though many years have intervened since 
I made them my companions, that it was like reading what I read yesterday over 
again. In a letter to John Newton, Dec. 13, 1784, he recalls Cleopatra's use of " worm" 
for "asp," though he has not read the play "these five-and twenty years." 

161 



1 62 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Nor was his feeling the cool, intellectual appreciation that is com- 
monly given to Milton to-day, but a warm, personal devotion that led 
him even at sixty to burst out: " I would beat Warton if he were liv- 
ing, for supposing that Milton ever repented of his compliment to the 
memory of Bishop Andrews. I neither do, nor can, nor will believe 
it. Milton's mind could not be narrowed by any thing." ^ He was 
still more incensed by the harsh treatment his favorite received at 
Johnson's hands. ''Oh! I could thresh his old jacket," he raged, 
" till I made his pension jingle in his pocket," ^ — strong words for an 
author of the Olney Hymns. "I abominate Nat. Le6," he wrote to 
Hay ley, "for his unjust compliment to Dryden so much at the ex- 
pense of a much greater poet." ^ He even dreamed of meeting his 
"idol" and being graciously received by him."* Such a strong, per- 
sonal admiration was due in no small degree to the religious charac- 
ter of Paradise Lost and the lofty principles and noble life of its 
author. Even some of the defects of what he termed "the finest poem 
in the world," ^ — its narrow Puritanism, its literal interpretation of 
the Bible, and its Hebraic conception of God, — probably seemed to 
him virtues. 

Cowper's devotion was lifelong. Beginning at fourteen, it gave 
birth to the first of his poems that has been preserved ; and when the 
shades of melancholy settled over him never again to rise they found 
him editing and dreaming of his favorite poet. Between the two 
periods is scattered many a Miltonic item. The well-known hymn, 
"Jesus, where'er thy people meet," which appeared in his first vol- 
ume, Olney Hymns (1779), contains a Hne, 

And bring all heaven before our eyes, 

taken with the change of only a pronoun from Penseroso. The next 
year came his Latin translations of a simile from Paradise Lost,^ and 
of Dryden's couplets on Milton (a modified form of these couplets he 
afterwards introduced into his Table Talk) ; ^ and three years later 
followed his tribute in The Task, 

^ Letter to Walter Bagot, Oct. 25, 1791. 

^ See letters to Unwin, Oct. 31, 1779, and March 21, 1784; to Walter Bagot, May 2, 
1791 (in which Johnson is threatened with "another slap or two"); to William Hayley, 
May 1, 1792 ("Oh that Johnson! how does every page of his on the subject [Milton], ay, 
almost every paragraph, kindle my indignation!"), and Oct. 13, 1792. 
^ Nov. 25, 1792. * Letter to Hayley, Feb. 24, 1793. 

* Letter to Hayley, May 9, 1792. 

8 See his letter to Unwin, June 8, 1780; cf. P. L., ii. 488 ff. 
' Lines 556-9: Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appeared, 

And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard; 
To carry nature lengths unknown before, 
To give a Milton birth, asked ages more. 



COWPER 163 

Milton, whose genius had angelic wings, 
And fed on manna. ^ 

In 1790 the supposed disinterment of Milton's body called from his 
pen some "Stanzas," two of which are translated from Milton's 
Mansus.^ The following year appeared the preface to his Homer, 
containing, along with a number of other references, the words, "So 
long as Milton's works, whether his prose or his verse, shall exist, so 
long there will be abundant proof that no subject, however impor- 
tant, however subHme, can demand greater force of expression than 
is within the compass of the EngKsh language; " and six months later 
he wrote to a friend, "My veneration for our great countryman is 
equal to what I feel for the Grecian; and consequently I am happy, 
and feel myself honourably employed whatever I do for Milton. I 
am now translating his Epitaphium Damonis, a pastoral in my judg- 
ment equal to any of Virgil's Bucolics.'^ ^ The translation he refers 
to was part of a new edition of Milton, for which he was to turn the 
Latin and ItaHan poems into English and furnish notes. Through 
this work he came to know Milton's biographer, William Hayley, 
with whom he translated the Adamo of Andreini, a poem important 
only because of its possible influence on Paradise Lost; and he was 
engaged upon the editing when his dreaded melanchoHa and hal- 
lucinations returned for the last time. Thus from youth to old age 
there were never many months when he was not occupied in parody- 
ing or praising or translating or imitating or editing "this first of 
poets." ^ 

The earliest work of Cowper's that we have is a travesty of Para- 
dise Lost which was probably struck in the mint of the Splendid 
Shilling: 

For neither meed 

Of early breakfast, to dispel the fumes 

And bowel-racking pains of emptiness, 

Nor noontide feast, nor evening's cool repast, 

Hopes she from this, presumptuous, — though perhaps 

The cobbler, leather-carving artist, might. ^ 

Strange to say, his masterpiece. The Task, was also begun as a kind 
of parody on Milton's epic. "The Sofa," which Lady Austen had 
jestingly proposed to him as a subject, could hardly be the theme of 
a serious poem; yet he seems to have thought that he might do 

^ iii. 255-6. 2 Lines 91-3. 

* To James Hurdis, Dec. 10, 1791. 

* Letter to Hurdis, Nov. 24, 1793. 

' Verses written in his 17th year, on Finding the Heel of a Shoe (1748), 4-9. 



164 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

something amusing by handling it in the involved and dignified 
style of Paradise Lost. The beginning of The Task certainly recalls 
passages in Milton's two long poems : 

I sing the Sofa. I who lately sang 

Truth, Hope, and Charity, and touched with awe 

The solemn chords, and with a trembUng hand 

Escaped with pain from that adventurous flight, _ 

Now seek repose upon an humbler theme. " 

This appears to be an adaptation of the opening lines of Paradise 
Regained, 

I, who erewhile the happy Garden sung 

By one man's disobedience lost, now sing . . . , 

with a jocose reference to the "advent'rous song" and to another 
famous passage in Paradise Lost, 

Thee I revisit now with bolder wing. 

Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detain'd.^ 

A little farther on, in the humorous description of the evolution of 

the chair, 

With here and there a tuft of crimson yarn. 

Or scarlet crewel in the cushion fixed : 

If cushion might be called what harder seemed . . . ,^ 

the last line seems to parody the language in which Milton pictures 
Death, 

The other Shape, 
If shape it might be call'd that shape had none.^ 

There can be no question of the parody in the following passage : 

The nurse sleeps sweetly, hired to watch the sick, 
Whom snoring she disturbs. As sweetly he 
Who quits the coach-box at the midnight hour 
To sleep within the carriage more secure, 
His legs depending at the open door. 
Sweet sleep enjoys the curate in his desk. 
The tedious rector drawling o'er his head. 
And sweet the clerk below: but neither sleep 
Of lazy nurse, who snores the sick man dead, 
Nor his who quits the box at midnight hour 
To slumber in the carriage more secure, 
Nor sleep enjoyed by curate in his desk, 
Nor yet the dozings of the clerk, are sweet, 
Compared with the repose the Sofa yields.* 

^ P. L., i. 13, iii. 13-14. ^ Task, i. 53-5. 

' P. L., ii. 666-7, and cf. i. 227-8. Possibly "as yet black breeches were not" (Task, 
i. 10) was intended to recall Milton's "as yet this world was not" (P. L., v. 577). 

* Task, i. 89-102. Compare Eve's words to Adam, "Sweet is the breath of Mom," 



COWPER 165 

The burlesque is not continued beyond these lines, and reappears 
but once, in the third book, in a good-natured parody of Philips or 
Thomson.^ For, after a hundred lines of jesting, the poet slips off 
the sofa for a walk, and rambles on till the work that started upon 
"any subject" comes to include almost every subject, and the sofa 
is forgotten. 

Cowper's enthusiasm for Paradise Lost inevitably made itself felt 
in his blank verse; yet Milton exerted less influence on TIte Task 
than on the work of many men— Thomson, for instance — who cared 
less for him. For this there are several reasons. In the first place, 
Cowper's native abiHties and inclinations did not lie in stately peri- 
ods but in easy, flowing, conversational verse, in the description not 
of sublime but of domestic scenes. The qualities that give charm to 
his poetry are those which made him a delightful letter-writer and 
by no means those which produced the lofty and austere beauties of 
Paradise Lost. These natural aptitudes, furthermore, he had de- 
veloped in the volume of rimed poems he had just published, the first 
of which is, characteristically enough, called Table Talk. Then, too, 
a work undertaken to please a sprightly lady and dispel its author's 
gloom, a work which deals with tame hares, tea-drinking, winter- 
morning walks, and the pleasures of the garden and the fireside, is 
hardly one to employ the style and diction consecrated to the rebel- 
lion of archangels. To be sure, Philips, Grainger, and even Thomson 
had used the stately periods of Paradise Lost in the treatment of 
lowly themes; but Cowper's finer taste and far more delicate literary 
feeling would never have permitted the enormities these men were 
guilty of. Such topics as Hberty, religion, war, and slavery, with 
which the poem has much to do, might properly enough have been 
discussed in a Miltonic style if the tone of the poem had not been 
fixed by the quiet pictures of nature and the homely subjects that 
receive most of the attention, and if Cowper had not preferred to 
treat even weighty matters in an incidental, conversational manner 
rather than with the formality required by a loftier strain. 

For these reasons it is not surprising that The Task contains many 
passages like the following, which show no influence from Paradise 
Lost: 

etc., "But neither breath of Mom . . . nor rising Sun . . . nor grateful Evening . . . 
without thee is sweet" {P. L., iv. 641-56). Other passages in Cowper that seem to be 
derived from Milton are noted in Appendix A, below. In lines 14-16 of Yardley Oak 
there is a reference to Paradise Lost, ix. 1084-1100; and in a letter to Lady Hesketh, 
Oct. 13, 1798, there is one to Milton's sonnet on his blindness. 
^ iii. 446-543 (directions for raising cucumbers). 



1 66 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

He is the happy man, whose life even now 

Shows somewhat of that happier Hfe to come; 

Who, doomed to an obscure but tranquil state. 

Is pleased with it, and, were he free to choose. 

Would make his fate his choice; whom peace, the fruit 

Of virtue, and whom virtue, fruit of faith, 

Prepare for happiness ; bespeak him one 

Content indeed to sojourn while he must 

Below the skies, but having there his home.^ 

Verse so easy and flowing, so natural and conversational as this, is 
rare even near the end of the eighteenth century. It anticipates 
Wordsworth, and seems to belong to an entirely different age from 
that which produced Leonidas, the Sugar-Cane, and The Fleece. 
With Cowper, indeed, we reach the most supple blank verse, the kind 
best adapted to the ordinary uses of poetry, that was written before 
Tintern Abbey and Michael.^ 

Although the passage just quoted is typical of much of The Task, 
rarely are so many consecutive lines free from any suggestion of 
Paradise Lost. Ordinarily in this poem, as in the Night Thoughts, 
one or another feature of Milton's style or diction occurs in almost 
every paragraph. Yet such characteristics do not usually become 
marked throughout a number of consecutive Hnes, but only in short 
passages like these: 

Hard fare! but such as boyish appetite, 
Disdains not, nor the palate, undepraved 
By culinary arts, unsavoury deems. 

Ocean . . . invades the shore 
Resistless. Never such a sudden flood, 
Upridged so high, and sent on such a charge. 
Possessed an inland scene. Where now the throng 
That pressed the beach, and hasty to depart 
Looked to the sea for safety? They are gone, 
Gone with the refluent wave into the deep. 

Immortal Hale! for deep discernment praised, 
And sound integrity, not more than famed 
For sanctity of manners undefiled. 

Those Ausonia claims, 
Levantine regions these; the Azores send 
Their jessamine, her jessamine remote 
Caffraria. 

* vi. 906-14. 

^ Besides making blank verse more supple and flowing, Cowper, like Young, helped 
to give it some of the epigrammatic crispness of the couplet. 



COWPER 167 

Thy rams are there, 
Nebaioth, and the flocks of Kedar there; 
The looms of Ormus, and the mines of Ind, 
And Saba's spicy groves, pay tribute there. ^ 

It will be noticed that what most frequently gives these lines their 
Miltonic ring is the inversion of the normal word-order, from which 
few sentences in The Task are free. When the inversion is accom- 
panied by the omission of an auxiliary in a negative sentence, as in 
"disdains not," "nor conversant," "nor wanted aught within," "nor 
suspends," "proved He not plainly," "he seeks not," "not slothful 
he," ^ there is a strong suggestion of Paradise Lost. That particu- 
larly Miltonic inversion, a word placed between two dependent 
words or phrases, — "devious course uncertain," "feathered tribes 
domestic," "a sordid mind Bestial," "for deep discernment praised 
And sound integrity,"^ — was as attractive to Cowper as to his pred- 
ecessor. By no means so common, but perhaps as frequent as in 
Milton (an instance on nearly every page), is his use of an adjective 
where an adverb would ordinarily be employed, as " spring spontane- 
ous," "invades the shore Resistless," "cherups brisk," "sedulous I 
seek," "sipping calm," "disposes neat," "breathe mild," "wheeling 
slow," "impeded sore," "blazing clear," "sheepish he doffs his hat," 
"now creeps he slow, and now . . . Wide scampering." * 

The diction of The Task, as might be expected in a poem published 
half a century later than Winter and but two years before Words- 
worth entered college, is more simple and natural than was usual in 
eighteenth-century blank verse. Cowper's language is, indeed, more 
conversational than that of many authors who came after him. 
What makes us think of The Task with The Seasons rather than with 
The Prelude is its style and contents, not its diction. The strongly 
Latinized vocabulary that is largely responsible for the turgidity of 
Thomson and his followers is not a characteristic of Cowper. Occa- 
sionally, however, he does make use of such unusual words from the 
Greek or Latin as "vermicular," "recumbency," "arthritic," "re- 
volvency," "feculence," "peccancy," "vortiginous," "refluent," 
"sempiternal," "oscitancy," "meliorate," "stercoraceous," "ag- 
glomerated," "ebriety," "tramontane," "introverted," "indu- 

^ i. 123-5; "• 111-20; iii. 258-60, 582-5; vi. 804-7. 

^ i. 124; iii. 24; V. 156; vi. 308, 447, 920, 928. 

' iii. 3; V. 62, 453-4; iii. 258-9; cf. also v. 119-20, 153, 164 (three instances on one 
page). 

< i. 603; ii. 114-15; iii- 9, 367, 39i, 423, 443, 499; iv. 343, 381, 628; v. 48-9. For 
other instances, see i. 20, iio-ii, 266, 347, 510-11; ii. 103, 374; iii. 563, 579; iv. 291, 
293, 343-4, 478-9, 541; V. 7, 24-6 (two instances), 359-6o, 426; vi. 79, 375-6, 723, etc. 



1 68 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

rated." "vitreous," "lubricity," "terraqueous," "confutation," 
"prelibation," "prepense," "ostent." ^ Now and then he employs 
words in their original though obsolete meanings or applications, as 
"speculative height" (affording an extensive view), "devotes" 
(vows to destruction), "obnoxious" (exposed to), "coincident" 
(agreeing), "soliciting" (trying to draw out, as darts in the side of a 
deer), "congenial" (kindred), "assimilate" (make similar), "ad- 
mire" (wonder), "invest" (clothe the branch of a tree), "involved" 
(enveloped, as in tobacco-smoke), "induced" (drew on, of a chair- 
cover), "reprieve" (said of preserving shade-trees), "lapse" (said 
of snowflakes), "ardent" (said of clouds).^ 

The most vicious of the many varieties of poetic diction that 
cursed the eighteenth century, the periphrasis, is so infrequent in 
The Task as to be negligible. Yet such phrases as "the sprightly 
chord" (harp?), "the sylvan scene" (fields), "philosophic tube" 
(telescope), "the fragrant lymph" (tea), "clouds Of Indian fume" 
(tobacco-smoke), "the feathered tribes domestic" (hens), "the 
fleecy flood" (snow), " the prickly and green-coated gourd" (cucum- 
ber), "the fragrant charge of a short tube That fumes beneath his 
nose" (tobacco),^ show a kinship between the poet of Olney and the 
writers of the first half of his century. 

"Compound epithets," Cowper wrote in the preface for a second 
edition of his Homer, "have obtained so long in the poetical language 
of our country, that I employed them without fear or scruple." 
Even in The Task they are quite as common as in The Seasons, 
but, being more "happily combined,"^ are far less noticeable. The 
first page I open to has three instances (an average number), all in 
the Thomson vein, — "card-devoted," "homely-featured," "bird- 
alluring." ^ 

Save for his frequent use of adjectives for adverbs, Cowper does 
not often make one part of speech do service for another. Yet in 
phrases like " all-essenced o'er With odours," "basket up the fam- 
ily," "well equipaged," "filleted about with hoops," "to buckram 

1 i. 30, 82, 105, 372, 684; ii. 72, 102, 120, 499, 774; iii. 304, 463, 472; iv. 460, 533, 
633; V. 98, 161, 165, 281, 567, 574, 585; vi. 486. 

* i. 289 (cf. P. L.,xii. 588-9, P. R., iv. 236); ii. 20, 156,374; iii. 115, 205; iv. 329; 
vi. 128; iii. 666 (and vi. 169); iv. 472; i. 32, 264; iv. 327; v. 4. 

' ii. 78, 107; iii. 229,391; iv. 472-3; v. 62,63; iii. 446; v. 55-6. The last two exam- 
ples may be intended humorously, as those in iii. 463-543 certainly are. These are all 
the periphrases I have noted, but there are probably others. 

* Preface for a second edition of his Homer. 

' iv. 229, 252, 263; some editions hyphenate "slow moving" (246). "Spectacle- 
bestrid," "ear-erecting," "truth-tried," and "cheek-distending" (ii. 439, iii. 9, 56, iv. 
488) are instances of Cowper's more marked and less successful combinations. 



COWPER 169 

out the memory,"^ he uses substantives as verbs; while in "garnish 
your profuse regales," and " the employs of rural life,"^ he turns the 
tables. In "deluging the dry," "I am no proficient," "spare the 
soft And succulent," "no powdered pert," "the first and only fair" 
(meaning God), "in the vast and the minute," ^ adjectives appear as 
nouns; in "saturate with dew," "emancipate and loosed," "unadul- 
terate air," "* we have the dipt form of participle that Milton liked. 
Since Cowper's natural, easy, and somewhat diffuse style is in 
marked contrast to the brevity and condensation of Paradise Lost, 
his poem might be expected to contain comparatively few of the 
parenthetical or appositional expressions that served Milton so well. 
Appositives, like "he of Gath, GoHath," and 

No works indeed 
That ask robust tough sinews bred to toil, 
Servile employ,* 

are rare; but parenthetical expressions are thick as autumnal leaves 
in Vallombrosa. "There 's a parenthesis for you ! " he exclaimed on 
one occasion, after quoting (for another purpose) four lines from 
Paradise Lost. "The parenthesis it seems is out of fashion, and per- 
haps the moderns are in the right to proscribe what they cannot 
attain to. I will answer for it that, had we the art at this day of in- 
sinuating a sentiment in this graceful manner, no reader of taste 
would quarrel with the practice." ^ Many of the parentheses in The 
Task involve too Httle condensation to seem Mil tonic, but a consid- 
erable number do recall Paradise Lost; for example, 

The rest, no portion left 
That may disgrace his art, or disappoint 
Large expectation, he disposes neat. 

Often urged, 
(As often as, libidinous discourse 
Exhausted, he resorts to solemn themes 
Of theological and grave import,) 
They gain at last his unreserved assent ; 
Till hardened his heart's temper in the forge 
Of lust, and on the anvil of despair, 
He slights the strokes of conscience. 

^ ii. 227-8, 667; iii. 98; v. 402; vi. 652. 

* iii. 551 (cf. his Odyssey, i. 177, ii. 25), 625 (cf. 406). 
' ii. 56; iii. 210, 417-18; iv. 145; v. 675, 811. 

* i. 494; ii. 39; iv. 7SO (cf. v. 465). 
' iv. 269-70; iii. 404-6. 

' Letter to Bagot, Oct. 25, 1791. 



I70 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

And now, his prowess proved, and his sincere 
Incurable obduracy evinced, 
His rage grew cool.i 

Cowper's tendency to diffuseness also kept him, as a rule, from 
omitting words that would be expressed in prose. Yet there are not 
a few instances like these: "what can they less," "nor this to feed 
his own," "the gods themselves had made," "happy who walks with 
Him," "so little mercy shows who needs so much," "who . . . 
forgets. Or can, the more than Homer," "who will may preach, 
And what they will," "not slothful he, though seeming unem- 
ployed," 

Was honoured, loved, and wept 
By more than one, themselves conspicuous there. 

Moral truth 
How lovely, and the moral sense how sure, 
Consulted and obeyed, to guide his steps.'' 

The result of these various departures from ordinary usage is that 
a reader who is attentive to the matter catches reverberations from 
Paradise Lost on every page of The Task. These echoes were heard 
and admired at the time; for the Gentleman's Magazine lauded 
Cowper as "perhaps, without excepting even Philips, the most suc- 
cessful of the imitators of Milton." ^ A curious, back-handed com- 
pliment this seems to us, but the writer probably meant that the 
blank verse of The Task was among the very best of the century and 
that it was essentially Miltonic. And these things are true. 

With the completion of The Task, Cowper, whose mind "abhorred 
a vacuum as its chief bane," * was already sinking into a fit of his old 
depression, when one day, happening to take up a copy of the Iliad, 
he translated a few lines by way of diversion. The experiment suc- 
ceeded so well that he tried it again, and eventually, in 1791, pub- 
hshed the whole of Homer in blank verse. One would expect the 
translation to be as much more Miltonic than The Task as its sub- 
ject-matter is more heroic and exalted: the epic demanded "heigh 
style," and what example of lofty blank verse was there to compare 
with Paradise Lost? Nevertheless, it is with something of a shock 
that a reader of The Task opens the Homer. For the conversational 
ease and natural, flowing charm of the early work have given place 

1 iii. 421-3; V. 659-66; vi. 531-3. 

^ ii. 644; iv. 452; V. 292; vi. 247, 431, 645-7, 889-90, 928; ii. 786-7; v. 672-4. Note 
also p. 167 above. 

3 Ivi. 235 (March, 1786). 

* Letter to Newton, Dec. 3, 1785. 



COWPER 171 

to a distorted word-order, an involved, jerky style, to inversions 
within inversions, parentheses crowding appositives, and to adjec- 
tives, torn from their natural positions, regularly performing the 
functions of adverbs. It is hard to see how Homer could be made 
any more Miltonic. My own first thought was that the inversions 
and the rest were introduced to preserve the word-order and other 
features of the original; but, on comparing with the Greek the pas- 
sages that had struck me as most Miltonic, I found this was not the 
case. The line, " These things pondering in his mind, which were not 
to be fulfilled," ^ for example, Cowper translates, 

In false hopes occupied and musings vain.^ 

"If quickly had not perceived [him] great crest-tossing Hector. He 
went then through the van armed in shining brass," he renders, 

Had not crest-tossing Hector huge perceived 
The havoc; radiant to the van he flew.^ 

"'For the dearest men are under my roof.' Thus he spoke, and 
Patroclus obeyed his dear companion," is changed to, 

For dearer friends than these who now arrive 
My roof beneath, or worthier, have I none. 
He ended, and Patroclus quick obey'd 
Whom much he loved.* 

"So I spoke, and the soul of swift-footed vEacides withdrew with 
great strides along the asphodel meadow, glad that I had saidlhis son 
was famous," is contorted into 

So I ; then striding large, the spirit thence 
Withdrew of swift .i^acides, along 
The hoary mead pacing with joy elate 
That I had blazon'd bright his son's renown.^ 

"He knew [me] immediately when he saw me with his eyes, and me 
he, sorrowing, with winged words addressed," appears as 

Me his eye 

No sooner mark'd, than knowing me, in words 
By sorrow quick suggested, he began.^ 

^ In my translations everything else has been sacrificed to literalness and a close 
adherence to the word-order of the original. 

* Iliad, ii. 36; Cowper, ii. 44. 

* Iliad, V. 680-81; Cowper, v. 807-8. 

* Iliad, ix. 204-5; Cowper, ix. 252-5. 

^ Odyssey, xi. 538-40; Cowper, xi. 658-61. 

* Odyssey, xi. 615-16; Cowper, xi. 749-51. 



172 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 



Is even Pope's version farther from the spirit of Homer than these 
verses? It may be, of course, that Cowper, while not trying to repro- 
duce the original word-order of any particular passage, felt that the 
general use of inversions and of adjectives for adverbs would give the 
effect of the Greek; but in reality they produce an impression en- 
tirely unlike Homer's by destroying his simple directness, natural- 
ness, and rapidity.^ The explanation is probably to be found in 
Cowper's desire to give his translation epic dignity, in his love for 
Paradise Lost, and in the false taste of the period with which he was 
inevitably tainted. 

When the poet's friends, and the reviewers (who were of a younger 
generation), objected strongly to these excessive Miltonisms, the 
translator himself insisted they were not there. ''With respect to 
inversions in particular," he wrote, "I know that they do not 
abound. Once they did, and I had Milton's example for it. . . . 
But on Fuseli's remonstrance against them, I expunged the most, 
and in my new edition have fewer still. I know that they give dig- 
nity, and am sorry to part with them." ^ In the "new edition" to 
which he refers, though he introduced some additional inversions 
and other Miltonisms, he undoubtedly did remove many of the old 
ones, and thus made the translation more simple and flowing if less 
spirited. In that version, published two years after his death, two 
of the passages given above run thus : 

I spake, whose praises of his son, the ghost 
Of swift ^acides exulting heard, 
And measuring with larger strides, for joy, 
The meadow gray with asphodel, retir'd. 

Soon as he beheld 
He knew me, and in sorrow thus began. ^ 

The Task and the translation of Homer had done so much to dispel 
the gloom which was never far from the unfortunate poet that as 

1 The diction is often equally objectionable: e. g., "coetaneous," "stridulous," "dis- 
missed" (of a spear), "salutiferous," "expressed" (of juice), "retracting" (of a cord), 
"impressed" (of wounds), "in peculiar," "promulge," "revulsed," "conflicted" (as a 
verb), "acuminated," "afflictive," "necessitous," "chode," "grumous" {Iliad, i. 315; 
ii. 268; iii. 422, and vii. 320, xi. 459, 685, etc.; v. 469, 1074; viii. 374, 472; ix. 119; ix. 
123 and X. 356; xii. 481; xiii. 830; xv. 585; xvi. 15, 1021; xvii. 520; xxiii. 872). 

' Letter to Samuel Rose, Feb. 17, 1793. 

' Odyssey, xi. 657-60, 746-7. It is the first edition that Southey reprinted, following 
the advice of all with whom he consulted; likewise it is the first edition of Cowper's 
Odyssey that appears in Everyman's library. Cowper also translated some of the Aeneid 
and a few of Milton's Latin poems into blank verse. As might be expected, these trans- 
lations show more influence from Paradise Lost than does The Task. ' The humorous 
unrimed skit, To the Immortal Memory of the Halibut (written 1784), is also slightly 
Miltonic. 



■ 



COWPER 173 

soon as the Odyssey was finished he and his friends cast about for a 
subject of a new poem to occupy his attention. Some one suggested 
The Four Ages of Man, and he seems himself to have thought of 
Yardley Oak; but, although he began each poem (both, it should be 
observed, in blank verse), he carried neither beyond a few pages. 
The Four Ages is not unlike the dull parts of The Task; but Yardley 
Oak achieves a much loftier strain, "a combination of massiveness 
and 'atmosphere'" which Mr. Saintsbury finds unmatched, outside 
of Spenser and Shakespeare, by any earlier English poet.^ At any 
rate, no writer of the century composed any nobler piece of blank 
verse. Nor did the giants of the following age often do better, for 
Yardley Oak is not unworthy of Wordsworth, whose Yew-Trees it 
prefigures. Superficial Miltonisms, such as "excoriate forks de- 
form," "fostering propitious," "I would not curious ask," "the heat 
Transmitting cloudless," "by the tooth Pulverized of venality,"^ 
are less marked in Yardley Oak than in the Homer; but there is a 
full-toned largeness of utterance in such lines as these that make 
them more profoundly Miltonic than any others Cowper wrote : 

Time made thee what thou wast, king of the woods, 
And Time hath made thee what thou art — a cave 
For owls to roost in. Once thy spreading boughs 
O'erhung the champaign; and the numerous flocks 
That grazed it stood beneath that ample cope 
Uncrowded, yet safe-sheltered from the storm. . . . 
While thus through all the stages thou hast pushed 
Of treeship, first a seedling, hid in grass; 
Then twig; then sapling; and, as century rolled 
Slow after century, a giant-bulk 
Of girth enormous, with moss-cushioned root 
Upheaved above the soil, and sides embossed 
With prominent wens globose, till at the last 
The rottenness, which time is charged to inflict 
On other mighty ones, found also thee.^ 

^ Peace of the Augustans, 341. I cannot, however, agree with this eminent critic 
when he says {ib. 339) that "what Cowper might have been as a poet is perhaps only 
shown" in this piece and The Castaway; for, short as Yardley Oak is, it is not sustained. 
There are dull passages (e. g., lines 29-32, 45-9, 1 20-24, 137-61), unrhythmical lines (57, 
94, 123), and objectionable diction (5, 66, no). The latter part, and particularly the 
concluding lines, show such a decided falhng-off both in contents and in expression that 
it looks as if Cowper abandoned the poem because his inspiration had fled, because he 
found he had nothing to say and could not sustain the lofty tone with which he began. 

2 Lines 5, 39, 42, 74, 123. 

' Lines 50-68. Lines 14-16 contain a reference to Paradise Lost, ix. 1084-1100; and 
some of the diction is perhaps Miltonic, — e. g., "meed" (13, cf. Lycidas, 14), "with 
vegetative force instinct" (34, cf. P. L., ii. 937, vi. 752), "globose" (66, cf. P. L., vii. 
357, etc.), and such Latinisms as "latitude of boughs" (21) and "impulse" of the wind 
(84). Strangely enough, J. C. Bailey, in his excellent edition of Cowper (1905, p. Ivi), 



174 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

In 1 79 1, while Cowper was visiting William Hayley, the two men, 
one of whom was editing Milton and the other writing a life of him, 
translated the Adamo of Andreini, a probable source of Paradise 
Lost. Like the original, the translation (by no means a masterpiece) 
is in short lines, generally of irregular length and without rime. The 
diction and style, as might be expected of a poem in which God, 
Satan, angels, Adam and Eve, are the characters, frequently though 
never strongly recall Paradise Lost. Some idea of the work may be 
gathered from these lines: 

Adam, awake! and cease 

To meditate in rapturous trance profound 

Things holy and abstruse, 

And the deep secrets of the Trinal Lord.^ 

This brief examination of Cowper's writings shows that both in 
the bulk and in the importance of the poems affected the influence 
of Milton looms large. The Verses on Finding the Heel of a Shoe, The 
Task, the poem to the haUbut, the Four Ages, Yardley Oak, the son- 
nets, the translations of Homer, Virgil, Andreini, and of Milton's 
Italian and Latin poems, — these pieces, which make up the most 
considerable and the most important part of Cowper's work, are all 
unmistakably Miltonic.^ Yet in one of his letters he speaks of "hav- 
ing imitated no man," and continues: ''Milton's manner was pecu- 
liar. So is Thomson's. He that should write Hke either of them, 
would, in my judgment, deserve the name of a copyist, but not of a 
poet." 3 Cowper was no copyist. The Task and Yardley Oak are 
entirely his own in style no less than in subject-matter ; no one else 
could have written them. His relations to Milton were like those we 
bear to our father and mother. We do not deUberately imitate our 
parents; we love them, and are in constant close association with 
them through the years when we receive our deepest impressions, 
and thus our ideals, our opinions, our acts, are affected by them in a 
hundred ways of which we are not conscious. So Cowper, who had 
read the elder poet enthusiastically since liis fourteenth year and re- 
remarks that the poem "stands alone among his works in being rather akin to Shake- 
speare than to Milton"! 

^ Cowper's Works (ed. Southey), x. 251. The Italian is, 

Sueglisi Adamo, e lasci 

Di fruir in bel rapto alte, e Diuine 

Occultissime cose, 

E del Trino Signor profondi arcani. 
Not a little of the diction which seems to be Miltonic is derived from the original. 
* For the influence of Milton on Cowper's sonnets, see p. 510 below. 
^ To John Newton, Dec. 13, 1784. 



COWPER 175 

garded him as "this great man, this greatest of men, your idol and 
mine," ^ came to feel that blank verse and Paradise Lost were in- 
separable, that non-Miltonic blank verse was a contradiction in 
terms. Among the requisites of blank verse he mentions " a style in 
general more elaborate than rhime requires, farther removed from 
the vernacular idiom both in the language itself and in the arrange- 
ment of it." 2 Since these qualities are neither distinctive of blank 
verse nor essential to it, is not this equivalent to declaring that good 
blank verse must be Miltonic? 

Another requirement that Cowper repeatedly stressed as a sine 
qua non of unrimed poetry was the pause, or pauses, within the Hne 
and the necessity of constantly shifting them about, a device to 
which, as he pointed out, Milton's "numbers" were "so much in- 
debted both for their dignity and variety." These pauses were to be 
commended, he held, even when they produced an occasional rough 
line, because such roughness "saves the ear the pain of an irksome 
monotony. . . . Milton," he continued, "whose ear and taste were 
exquisite, has exemplified in his Paradise Lost the effect of this prac- 
tice frequently." ^ In these matters, and indeed in his entire theory 
and practice of prosody, Cowper seems to have been strongly influ- 
enced by his favorite poem. He wrote to a friend, " The unacquaint- 
edness of modern ears with the divine harmony of Milton's numbers, 
and the principles upon which he constructed them, is the cause of 
the quarrel that they have with eUsions in blank verse." * And a 
little earher he had said: "The practice of cutting short a The is 
warranted by Milton, who of all EngHsh poets that ever lived, had 
certainly the finest ear. Dr. Warton, indeed, has dared to say that 
he had a bad one; for which he deserves, as far as critical demerit 
can deserve it, to lose his own." ^ 

Yet it was not simply in prosody but in diction as well that Milton 
was the final authority. Seven times in the course of his Homer 
Cowper justifies his use of a word by quoting from Milton,® whereas 
to the language of all other English poets he acknowledges but four 

^ Letter to Hayley, Nov. 22, 1793. 

* Preface to his Homer. If the Thunder Storm — which first appeared in Wright's 
Life (1892, p. 177) but which Bailey rejects both because of insufficient external evi- 
dence and because, as he justly observes, it does not sound like Cowper — is really 
by the poet of Olney, it shows that even his unpremeditated and unrevised verse was 
dearly Miltonic. 

' Preface to his Homer. 

* To Walter Bagot, Aug. 31, 1786. 

* Letter to Lady Hesketh, March 6, 1786. 

^ Iliad, v. 641, XV. 168, xxiii. 195; Odyssey, i. 178, xi. 19, 139, xxiv. 43. 



176 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

obligations.^ Indeed, he had come to regard Paradise Lost as a well- 
nigh perfect poem, one that furnished in all matters the model of 
good taste and the standard of good usage. "I am filled with won- 
der," he wrote to Lady Hesketh when he decided to drop from his 
Homer "the quaintness that belonged to our writers of the fifteenth 
century," **I am filled with wonder at my own backwardness to as- 
sent to the necessity of it, and the more when I consider that Milton, 
with whose manner I account myself intimately acquainted, is never 
quaint, never twangs through the nose, but is every where grand and 
elegant, without resorting to musty antiquity for his beauties." ^ 
With Cowper, as with Wordsworth, the first and last question was 
usually, ''What was Milton's usage?" To employ his own words, 
"The Author of the Paradise Lost [furnishes] an example inimitable 
indeed, but which no writer of English heroic verse without rhyme 
can neglect with impunity." ^ He intended neither to neglect nor 
servilely to follow this inimitable example, and he did neither; but 
he little realized how subtlely, how variously, and how extensively 
his admiration for his "idol" had affected his writings. 

^ Iliad, vii. 167 (Dryden); Odyssey, viii. 324 (Gray); x. 161, xxiv. 5, 11 (Shake- 
speare). 

2 March 22, 1790. "Borrowing," he wrote to Thomas Park, Feb. 19, 1792, "seems 
to imply poverty, and of poverty I can rather suspect any man than Milton." 

' Preface for a second edition of his Homer. 



CHAPTER IX 

WORDSWORTH 

The influence of Paradise Lost as we have seen it thus far has been 
abnost exclusively literary. Writers have been attracted not by Mil- 
ton's message but by his art, not by his character and opinions but 
by his versification and diction, not by what he said but by how he 
said it. His admirers have used his tools and tried to imitate his 
method of handling them, but for the most part they have been in- 
different to his personality, as well as to his conceptions of poetry and 
life. The Miltonism of Milton is, therefore, exactly what they have 
lacked. They could copy his diction, mimic his style, and at times 
catch something of the roll of his lines ; but the character behind all 
this, the spirit which animated and the purpose which consecrated it, 
they did not even strive for. It was not necessary, in most cases it 
was not desirable, that they should; if Thomson and Cowper, for 
example, had done so they would have written poems quite unlike 
The Seasons and The Task. Yet the fact remains that the admirers 
of Pope, Keats, Tennyson, and Whitman have caught much of the 
spirit and message as well as the form of their favorites, whereas 
Milton's followers have found him so unlike other poets that as a 
rule they have been content with merely reproducing his manner. 

In one writer, however, these conditions are reversed, and with 
most significant results. For the familiar evidences of the influence 
of Paradise Lost — adjectives employed as adverbs or substan- 
tives, unusual compound epithets, parentheses, appositives, omitted 
words, and the rest — indicate very inadequately the extent of that 
influence on the poetry of Wordsworth. Such peculiarities of style 
and diction do occur here and there, but they are not sufficiently 
marked to give a noticeable Miltonic ring to any large number of 
lines. Yet there sounds throughout Wordsworth's verse a note, 
scarcely heard in the simpler pieces but often unmistakable in the 
profounder ones, which at times rises till it becomes the dominant 
tone, almost drowning all others, a note which recalls the lofty sever- 
ity, the intensity of moral purpose, and the organ tone of the most 
exalted of English poets. To be sure, this note was natural to Words- 
worth, and it is impossible to say where temperamental similarity 



1 78 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 



ends and influence begins; yet similarity of this sort obviously fur- 
nishes the best possible ground for influence to work upon. It is be- 
cause Wordsworth was in essentials so much like the earlier Puritan 
that he admired him so highly, was so susceptible to his influence and 
so capable of profiting by it.^ 

The two men were, indeed, as regards the fundamentals of life and 
poetry, much more alike than is at first apparent. Both were Puri- 
tans, deeply religious men with high ideals, strong convictions, and 
a tendency towards narrowness and intolerance. Both were some- 
what austere and aloof, believers in "plain living and high thinking," 
absolutely sincere, confident of their powers, and unswayed by popu- 
lar opinion. Neither possessed a sense of humor or the grace of doing 
little things with ease, and neither was what is commonly known as 
"a good fellow"; yet both were fond of romances, tales of impossible 
adventure, and the poetry of Spenser. Each was devoted heart and 
soul to the cause of liberty and to England's political welfare, each 
took a profoundly serious view of poetry, each regarded his life as 
dedicated to the service of God and his fellow-men. Wordsworth 
declared, ''Every great poet is a teacher; I wish either to be con- 
sidered as a teacher or as nothing." - And the purpose of Milton's 
epic was: "Whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in vertu 
amiable, or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the 
changes of that which is call'd fortune from without, or the wily 
suttleties and refluxes of mans thoughts from within, all these 
things with a solid and treatable smoothnesse to paint out and de- 
scribe. Teaching over the whole book of sanctity and vertu. . . ." ' 
The two men were alike, it should be noticed, in their defects no less 
than in their virtues. Wordsworth was not repelled, as many have 
been, by the elder poet's egotism, his exacting nature, or his lack of 
easy geniality, for he had the same faults himself and thought lightly 
of them. He regarded Milton as an "awful soul" and admired him 
on that account. 

Externally, of course, there were great differences between the 
two. The lake poet was a kind of Milton in homespun. Milton was 
an aristocrat with an air of distinction, and in a way a man of the 

1 Conversely, it is because Wordsworth was so unlike Spenser that the Faerie 
Qtieene, for which he had a great admiration, exerted only a slight influence upon him. 

* Letter to Sir George Beaumont, 1807? {Letters of the Wordsworth Family, ed. 
Knight, Boston, 1907, i. 331). To Landor's remark that he was "disgusted with all 
books that treat of religion," Wordsworth replied (Jan. 21, 1824) : "I have little relish 
for any other. Even in poetry it is the imagination only, viz., that which is conversant 
with, or turns upon infinity, that powerfully affects me." 

' Reason of Church-Government, 1641, in Works (Pickering ed., 1851), iii. 147. 



■ 



WORDSWORTH 1 79 

world, whereas in Wordsworth there was something of the rustic. 
Milton's great learning, wide culture, and intellectual curiosity- 
caused him to be sought after, and, together with his strong though 
well-controlled passions, gave vigor, variety, and brilKance to his 
conversation. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was — at least in his 
later years — slow, ponderous, and introspective, and perhaps to 
most persons never a particularly interesting companion. In their 
verse the two men seem at first glance even farther apart than in 
their social qualities. The earlier poet chose the sublimest of themes 
and handled it in the loftiest of styles; the later one usually dealt 
in a simple way with wild-flowers, birds, his own quiet life and that 
of the peasants about him. Not only as a poet but as a man each 
had much in common with the period in which he spent his youth, 
Milton with the renaissance, Wordsworth with the eighteenth cen- 
tury. Yet the differences are not essential; for the purposes, the ideals 
of life, and the conceptions of poetry of the two were surprisingly 
alike. In fundamentals Wordsworth was closer to the author of 
Paradise Lost than any other English poet has been. 

This basic similarity was largely responsible for the profound ven- 
eration that Wordsworth felt for his predecessor. As the resem- 
blances between the two men were no less personal than literary, it 
was natural that the devotion of the later poet to the earHer should 
be quite as much to the man as to his works. At times, indeed, it 
would seem as if he revered the man above the poet, for in the son- 
net "Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour," he devoted 
twelve lines to his favorite's character and two to his verse. We may 
well pause for a moment over the circumstances that gave rise to 
this sonnet. Wordsworth had been in France, deeply concerned for 
the cause of liberty. Returning to his own country, he was depressed 
by its lack of heroism, by its wealth, its smug ease, its "vanity and 
parade." In this state of mind he thought of whom? the Greek and 
Roman patriots? Alfred? Hampden? Cromwell? No, of Milton, — 
not the poet, but the man among men, the pamphleteer who had 
given his eyes in liberty's defense. Stirred to his depths, the young 
patriot cried out: 

Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour: 
England hath need of thee: she is a fen 
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, 
Fireside, the heroic weakh of hall and bower 
Have forfeited their ancient English dower 
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; 
Oh! raise us up, return to us again; 



l8o THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. 
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart: 
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: 
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, 
So didst thou travel on life's common way, 
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart 
The lowliest duties on herself did lay. 

Nor was this a passing mood. In the same month he wrote, 

Great men have been among us; hands that penned 
And tongues that uttered widsom — better none: 
The later Sidney, Marvel, Harrington, 
Young Vane, and others who called Milton friend; 

and in still another sonnet of that month he exclaimed, 

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue 
That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold 
Which Milton held.^ 

These are significant lines: it is the "tongue," or poetry, of Shake- 
speare and the ''faith and morals" of Milton of which England 
should be proud. A year later, when fearing the Napoleonic inva- 
sion, Wordsworth summoned those who, 

like the Pyms and MUtons of that day, 
Think that a State would live in sounder health 
If Kingship bowed its head to Commonwealth.^ 

Similarly, in his prose Convention of Cintra he refers to England's 
"long train of deliverers and defenders, her Alfred, her Sidneys, and 
her Milton." ^ 

Long before 1802, however, Wordsworth had felt the appeal of 
Milton's personahty. Even in his idle Cambridge days it had im- 
pressed him ; for he wrote in The Prelude, 

Yea, our blind Poet, who, in his later day, 
Stood almost single; uttering odious truth — 
Darkness before, and danger's voice behind. 
Soul awfvd — if the earth has ever lodged 
An awful soul — I seemed to see him here 
Familiarly, and in his scholar's dress 
Bounding before me, yet a stripUng youth — 
A boy, no better, with his rosy cheeks 
Angelical, keen eye, courageous look, 
And conscious step of purity and pride.* 

1 "Great men," 1-4; "It is not to be thought of," 11-13. 
^ Lines on the Expected Invasion, 7-9. 
^ Prose Works (ed. Grosart, 1876), i. 112. 
* iii. 283-92. 



I 



WORDSWORTH l8l 

In the lines following these, Wordsworth confessed that the only 
time he was affected by Hquor was when he "poured out Libations" 
to the "temperate Bard" in the room the latter had occupied as a 
student. On another occasion, in speaking of the degenerate days of 
Charles II, he recalled Milton's fearless service to truth: 

Yet Truth is keealy sought for, and the wind 

Charged with rich words poured out in thought's defence. . . . 

And One there is who builds immortal lays, 

Though doomed to tread in solitary ways, 

Darkness before and danger's voice behind; 

Yet not alone, nor helpless to repel 

Sad thoughts; for from above the starry sphere 

Come secrets, whispered nightly to his ear; 

And the pure spirit of celestial light 

Shines through his soul — "that he may see and tell 

Of things invisible to mortal sight." ^ 

He contrasted Milton's unselfish heroism with the conduct of 
Goethe, who, in Wordsworth's opinion, "was amusing himself with 
fine fancies when his country was invaded ; how unhke Milton, who 
only asked himself whether he could best serve his country as a sol- 
dier or a statesman, and decided that he could fight no better than 
others, but he might govern them better." ^ Finally, in one of his 
prefaces he goes out of his way to make "a public acknowledgment 
of one of the innumerable obligations, which," he declares, "as a 
Poet and a Man, I am under to our great fellow-countryman."^ 
Wordsworth was, in truth, inspired as no other writer has been by 
the fife and character of this "great fellow-countryman," and it 
was such inspiration, together with the admiration lying back of 
it, that made possible the influence which Milton's work exerted 
upon his own. 

It is a matter of some importance that Wordsworth's delight in 
Paradise Lost and the other works of its author began in boyhood 
days. "The Poet's father," we are informed, " set him very early to 
learn portions of the works of the best English poets by heart, so 
that at an early age he could repeat large portions of Shakespeare, 
Milton, and Spenser;" ^ and Wordsworth himself told Mrs. Davy 
that Milton's poetry "was earher a favourite with him than that of 
Shakespeare." ^ Nor is there any question as to the permanence of 

^ Ecclesiastical Sonnets, III. iv ("Latitudinarianism"). 

2 Caroline Fox, Memories of Old Friends (3d ed., 1882), ii. 41, Oct. 6, 1844. 

3 "Advertisement" to the first edition of his Sonnets (1838). The italics are mine. 

* Christopher Wordsworth, Memoirs of Wordsworth (ed. Henry Reed, Boston, 1851), 

i- 34- 

* "Conversations," etc., Prose Works (ed. Gros'art), iii. 457. 



1 82 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

this enthusiasm. One of his friends wrote in 1826, "Spenser, Shake- 
speare, and Milton are his favourites among the EngHsh poets, 
especially the latter, whom he almost idolizes." ^ And after his death 
another said, "Wordsworth's favourite poet was Milton. ... It is 
curious to observe how Milton's genius triumphed over political 
prejudices in a mind so strongly imbued with them as that of Words- 
worth. . . . Perhaps he was almost as much attached to Milton as 
he was to his own lakes and mountains." ^ 

A lifelong admiration like this resulted, of course, in an unusual 
familiarity with Milton's poetry. Not only could he ' repeat large 
portions of it at an early age,' but when he was thirty-two, so he 
wrote Landor, he knew all the sonnets by heart.^ Accordingly, 
Charles Lamb, in giving him a first edition of Paradise Regained 
inscribed "To the best Knower of Milton," ^ was merely express- 
ing what is clear enough from Wordsworth's own poems and letters 
and the reports of his conversation. Crabb Robinson, for example, 
has left an account of a walk in which "Wordsworth was remarkably 
eloquent and fehcitous in his praise of Milton": 

He spoke of the Paradise Regained as surpassing even the Paradise Lost 
in perfection of execution, though the theme is far below it, and demand- 
ing less power. He spoke of the description of the storm in it as the finest 
in all poetry; and he pointed out some of the artifices of versification by 
which Milton produces so great an effect, — as in passages like this: — 

"Pining atrophy. 
Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence. 
Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums." 

In which the power of the final rheums is heightened by the atrophy and 
pestilence. Wordsworth also praised, but not equally, Samson Agonistes. 
He concurred, he said, with Johnson in this, that it had no middle, but the 
beginning and end are equally sublime.^ 

Another conversation is recorded by the poet's nephew: 

Milton is falsely represented by some as a democrat. He was an aristo- 
crat in the truest sense of the word. . . . Indeed, he spoke in very proud and 
contemptuous terms of the populace. Comus is rich in beautiful and sweet 
flowers, and in exuberant leaves of genius; but the ripe and mellow fruit 
is in Samson Agonistes. When he wrote that, his mind was Hebraized. 

1 J. J. Tayler, Letters (1872), i. 72. 

* Edward Whately, Personal Recollections of the Lake Poets, in Leisure Hour, Oct. i, 
1870, p. 653. 

3 See below, p. 529, n. 2. 

* Works (ed. Lucas, 1905), vii. 912. 

5 Diary, etc. (ed. T. Sadler, 1869), Jan. 7, 1836, and see Jan. 26. 



WORDSWORTH 1 83 

Indeed, his genius fed on the writings of the Hebrew prophets. . . . One of 
the noblest things in Milton is the description of that sweet, quiet morning 
in the Paradise Regained after that terrible night of howling wind and 
storm. The contrast is divine.^ 

In one of his letters Wordsworth noted that Milton's tractate Of 
Education "never loses sight of the means of making man perfect, 
both for contemplation and action, for civil and military duties." ^ 
To Lord Lonsdale he wrote, "I have long been persuaded that Mil- 
ton formed his blank verse upon the model of the Georgics and the 
Aeneid, and I am so much struck with this resemblance that I 
should have attempted Virgil in blank verse, had I not been per- 
suaded that no ancient author can be with advantage so rendered." ^ 
"Milton says of pouring ' easy his unpremeditated verse,' " he re- 
marked to W. R. Hamilton. "It would be harsh, untrue, and odious 
to say there is anything like cant in this; but it is not true to the let- 
ter, and tends to mislead. I could point out to you five hundred pas- 
sages in Milton, upon which labour has been bestowed, and twice 
five hundred more to which additional labour would have been 
serviceable; not that I regret the absence of such labour, because no 
poem contains more proof of skill acquired by practice." * How 
naturally Miltonic phrases rose to his mind is shown by his writing to 
Sir George Beaumont, "My creed rises up of itself with the ease of 
an exhalation, yet a fabric of adamant." ^ 

But all these evidences of Wordsworth's familiarity with his 
favorite pale before the testimony offered by his poems. These 
contain at least one hundred fifty-eight borrowings from Milton, a 
larger number than has been found in the work of any other poet, 
with the exception, strangely enough, of Pope.^ It is worth noting 
that these borrowings are scattered through more than seventy 
poems, and that they are taken not simply from Paradise Lost, 
Allegro, and Penseroso, but from Comus, Lycidas, Samson, Paradise 
Regained, the Nativity, and the sormets. They leave no doubt as to 

^ "Conversations," etc., Prose Works (ed. Grosart), iii. 461. Cf. P.R.,iv. 432-8. 

^ To John Scott, June 11, 1816. 

^ Feb. 5, 1819. 

* Letter of Nov. 22, 1831. 

^ May 28, 1825; cf. P.L., i. 710-11, 

Anon out of the earth a fabric huge 

Rose like an exhalation. 

^ This number does not include references to Milton or quotations from his works 
prefixed to several of Wordsworth's poems. The most comprehensive printed list of 
such references, quotations, etc., is in Kurt Lienemann's Die Belesenheit von William 
Wordsworth, [Weimar], 1908. 



1 84 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Wordsworth's familiarity with all the more important poetry of his 
predecessor, and not merely the poetry, for Artegal and Elidure, 
which "was written ... as a token of affectionate respect for the 
memory of Milton," ^ is based upon the latter's History of Britain. 
More than this, many of the phrases that Wordsworth takes are so 
inconspicuous as to have escaped the notice of his editors. Such ex- 
pressions as "sober certainty," *' teachers . . . Of moral prudence," 
"my genial spirits droop," "the . . . vessel . . . Rode tilting o'er 
the waves," "the vine . . . with her brings Her dower, the adopted 
clusters, to adorn" the elm, "reason is her [the soul's] being, Dis- 
cursive, or intuitive," ^ can have been impressed upon his mind only 
by many careful readings. Some of the most interesting of his bor- 
rowings occur, singularly enough, in one of his prose works, the Con- 
vention of Cintra. Besides mentioning Milton among England's 
"deliverers and defenders," this piece contains five quotations from 
his poetry and four references to it, and closes with an extract from 
his prose.^ Few would expect to recognize this last borrowing, since 
it is from the History of Britain; ^ but how many would detect a Mil- 
tonic phrase in "the central orb to which, as to a fountain, the na- 
tions of the earth ' ought to repair, and in their golden urns draw 
light ' "? ^ There are certainly not many who would notice anything 
from Paradise Lost in the sentence, "Wisdom is the hidden root 
which thrusts forth the stalk of prudence; and these uniting feed and 
uphold * the bright consummate flower ' — National Happiness." ^ 

Wordsworth wrote fifty-five poems in blank verse. Most of these, 
it must be confessed, belong to that desert, unwatered by the springs 
of imagination and unshaded by the foHage of beauty, which 

1 Fenwick note prefixed to the poem. 

2 For Wordsworth's use of these phrases, see below, Appendix A. 

' Prose Works (ed. Grosart), i. 49, 50, 93, 109, 112 (see p. 180 above), 126, 128, 149, 
171, 174. 

* Works (Pickering ed.), v. 100. Grosart's note (i. 359) is incorrect. 
^ Ih. (Grosart), 112; cf. P.L., vii. 361-5, 

The sun's orb. ... 
Hither, as to their fountain, other stars 
Repairing, in their golden urns draw light. 

^ lb. 171; cf. P.L., V. 479-81, 

So from the root 
Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves 
More aery, last the bright consummate flower. 
Neither this borrowing nor the preceding one is pointed out by Grosart or Knight. I 
owe them, and several other references and quotations, to Mrs. Alice M. Dunbar, 
of Wilmington, Delaware, who has generously placed at my disposal the extensive col- 
lection of material on Wordsworth's indebtedness to Milton which she made at Cornell 
University under the direction of Mr. Lane Cooper. 



WORDSWORTH 185 

stretches its dreary expanse through a large part of his verse. Of 
these fifty-five pieces there are few that do not show some influence 
from Paradise Lost, and fourteen are sufficiently Miltonic to be in- 
cluded in the appended bibliography. Less than half of the fourteen, 
however, have enough beauty or other importance to detain us. 
One of this number, one that deserves a much wider circle of readers 
than it seems to have gained, is the Address to Kilchurn Castle, a 
poem of only forty-three lines, but nobly conceived and expressed in 
its author's loftiest Miltonic manner. The organ tone is certainly 
here: 

Child of loud-throated War! the mountain Stream 

Roars in thy hearing; but thy hour of rest 

Is come, and thou art silent in thy age . . . 

Cast oflf — abandoned by thy rugged Sire, 

Nor by soft Peace adopted; though, in place 

And in dimension, such that thou might 'st seem 

But a mere footstool to yon sovereign Lord, 

Hugh Cruachan, (a thing that meaner hUls 

Might crush, nor know that it had suffered harm;) 

Yet he, not loth, in favour of thy claims 

To reverence, suspends his own; submitting 

All that the God of Nature hath conferred, 

All that he holds in common with the stars, 

To the memorial majesty of Time 

Impersonated in thy calm decay! 

Yew-Trees, though even shorter, is much better known. It is similar 
to the Address in dignity and largeness of utterance, as well as in the 
subordination of the object seen to the feelings and pictures of the 
past which it calls up to the imagination. The diction, it will be ob- 
served, is decidedly Miltonic, and at the same time, because of the 
dignity of the theme, eminently suitable : 

Of vast circumference and gloom profound 
This soUtary Tree! a living thing 
Produced too slowly ever to decay; 
Of form and aspect too magnificent 
To be destroyed. But worthier stUl of note 
Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale, 
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove; 
Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth 
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine 
Up-coUing, and inveterately convolved; 
Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks 
That threaten the profane; — a pillared shade. 

Of the remaining poems of Wordsworth that call for consideration, 
two, Home at Grasmere and The Excursion, are parts of a long, un- 



1 86 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

finished work, The Recluse, " a philosophical Poem, containing views 
of Man, Nature, and Society," ^ to which a third, The Prelude, is the 
prolog. The significance and imphcations of these well-known facts 
are apt to be overlooked, since we are bent on regarding Words- 
worth as a poet of nature and of the quiet lives of simple country 
folk, and since the passages that we remember from The Prelude are 
the descriptions of the out-of-doors and of boyish sports and ad- 
ventures. Yet these descriptions and brief narratives exist not for 
their own sake, but to help us understand the "growth of a poet's 
mind": they are illustrations of philosophic truths. The conviction 
that Wordsworth's true province was the English lakes should not 
make us forget his own emphatic declaration that "the Mind of 
Man" was his "haunt and the main region" of his "song." ^ Cer- 
tainly this was the field of his longest and, to him, most important 
poems. Such pieces, it goes without saying, would be very different 
from simple narratives like Michael; they would naturally be learned 
in diction, dignified and somewhat formal in style, and, if written in 
blank verse at the close of the eighteenth or the beginning of the 
nineteenth century, they would almost inevitably be Miltonic.^ The 
Recluse and its prefatory poem are not spontaneous warbhngs, but 
monumental literary works deliberately built up, with definite pur- 
poses and conscious art. 

One would expect works dealing largely with nature to be affected 
by the descriptive poetry of Thomson, the Wartons, Cowper, Hurdis, 
Grahame, and others; yet Wordsworth seldom referred to these 
writers and, except for Thomson, was apparently little influenced by 
any one of them."* Their collective influence, however, and that of 
their contemporaries was doubtless powerful, as the force of early 
reading and of the tastes and ideals with which one is surrounded in 
the formative years must always be. Yet it was unconscious, for 

1 "Advertisement" to The Prelude. 

2 Lines 40-41 of the extract from The Recluse prefixed to The Excursion. 

^ The theories of poetry which Wordsworth exemplified in the Lyrical Ballads and 
formulated in the preface to the second edition of that work had not a little to do with 
the simplicity of language and style of Tinturn Abbey and other pieces written at the 
time. In most of the poems composed after 1800, whether rimed or not, there is a 
tendency towards a more literary diction and a more formal style, which was in part a 
return to Wordsworth's natural method of expression (see Whately's remarks on the 
poet's conversation, quoted below, p. 190 n. i, 196 n. i). 

* Much is said in The Prelude about books, but nothing that I remember about 
eighteenth-century poems in blank verse. The "Essay supplementary to the Preface" 
(Poems, Oxford ed., 948-9), the sonnet "Bard of the Fleece," and the correspondence 
with Lady Beaumont, Allan Cunningham, and Alexander Dyce {Letters, i. 273, 539, ii. 
210, 358-9) do, however, reveal a warm admiration for Thomson and Dyer. At one 
time Wordsworth even thought of editing some of Thomson's works {ib. ii. 393). 



WORDSWORTH 1 87 

Wordsworth did not regard Thomson, Young, and Cowper as suit- 
able literary models. ''When I began to give myself up to the 
profession of a poet for life," he said to Crabb Robinson, "I was 
impressed with a conviction, that there were four English poets 
whom I must have continually before me as examples — Chaucer, 
Shakspeare, Spenser, and Milton. These I must study, and equal if 
I could; and I need not think of the rest." ^ Of these four the first 
three were not of a kind seriously to affect blank-verse philosophic 
works such as Wordsworth planned. Nor, it may be, would Milton 
have exerted much influence had not his style and diction come to be 
recognized as the most suitable for poems of the sort ; but in view of 
the course of EngKsh poetry in the eighteenth century, and of Words- 
worth's admiration for the star-like soul that dwelt apart, the strong- 
est single influence upon this part of his work would normally be 
that of Paradise Lost. 

With these things in mind, we shall not be surprised to find the 
style of the long unrimed pieces very different from that of the short 
ones and from what we may think of as Wordsworthian. Of course, 
written, as they were, not at the beginning but at the end of the 
eighteenth century, they will not show the pompous language and 
contorted style of 1726, for between them and The Seasons lay a long 
development of blank verse. 

Most of the stylistic peculiarities of Paradise Lost, though present 
in The Prelude and The Excursion, are not marked. Condensation is 
frequently gained by the omission of words, parenthetical expres- 
sions are fairly common, and occasionally a Miltonic apposition such 
as "Romorentin, home of ancient kings," is encountered; but one 
may read whole books of either work without meeting a cHpped 
form of participle or a single adjective used for an adverb or a sub- 
stantive. Inversion, however, the great mark of the Miltonic style, 
abounds. Not only is it on every page and in every paragraph, but 
seldom are five consecutive lines free from it. Furthermore, the in- 
versions are often meaningless; that is, they add nothing to the 
beauty or effectiveness of the passage, but appear to be used merely 
for the sake of the meter or to make the verse seem less like prose.^ 

^ "Conversations," etc., Prose Works (ed. Grosart), iii. 459-60. In a letter to 
Alaric Watts, Nov. 16, 1824, he quoted a passage in the same vein: "I am disposed 
strenuously to recommend to your habitual perusal the great poets of our own country, 
who have stood the test of ages. Shakespeare I need not name, nor Milton, but Chaucer 
and Spenser are apt to be overlooked. It is almost painful to think how far these sur- 
pass all others." 

^ A characteristic which The Excursion and The Prelude share with Paradise Lost 
but which may not be derived from the earlier work — which might, indeed, so nat- 



1 88 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

As a result of these inversions, of the many learned words, and of 
the condensation caused by the omission of words ordinarily ex- 
pressed, — notably auxiharies, — Wordsworth's long poems, and 
particularly The Prelude, are marked by a formality which at its 
best rises to dignity and at its worst degenerates into stiffness. Here 
is what may be termed a neutral passage, neither the best nor the 
worst that might be found : 

We were framed 

To bend at last to the same discipline, 

Predestined, if two beings ever were, 

To seek the same dehghts, and have one health, 

One happiness. Throughout this narrative, 

Else sooner ended, I have borne in mind 

For whom it registers the birth, and marks the growth. 

Of gentleness, simplicity, and truth. 

And joyous loves, that haUow innocent days 

Of peace and self-command. Of rivers, fields, 

And groves I speak to thee, my Friend! to thee. 

Who, yet a liveried schoolboy, in the depths 

Of the huge city, on the leaded roof 

Of that wide edifice, thy school and home, 

Wert used to lie and gaze upon the clouds 

Moving in heaven; or, of that pleasure tired. 

To shut thine eyes.^ 

The influence of Paradise Lost is by no means so marked through- 
out the long poems as it is in these lines. Yet it is clearly, though 
not unpleasantly, evident in the style in which a large part of The 
Prelude and some of The Excursion are written, a style easier and 
more attractive than that of the extract just quoted, as the follow- 
ing passage will show : 

Oh, sweet it is, in academic groves, 

Or such retirement. Friend! as we have known 

In the green dales beside our Rotha's stream, 

Greta, or Derwent, or some nameless rill. 

To ruminate, with interchange of talk. 

On rational liberty, and hope in man. 

Justice and peace.^ 

urally belong to any poet that, except for Wordsworth's unusual familiarity with Mil- 
ton, it would not be worth noticing — is the use of a series of adjectives, participles, or 
nouns in the same construction. Here are a few of the many instances: "Abject, de- 
pressed, forlorn, disconsolate" {Prelude, v. 28); "Fierce, moody, patient, venturous, 
modest, shy" (v. 415); "Unbiassed, unbewildered, and unawed" (vi. 41); "Un- 
chastened, unsubdued, unawed, unraised" (vi. 505); "Great, universal, irresistible" 
(xi. 17, and see be. 373, xii. 64) ; "Self-reviewed, Self-catechised, self -punished" {Excur- 
sion, vi. 386-7). 

1 Prelude, vi. 255-71. ^ lb. ix. 390-96. 



WORDSWORTH 1 89 

Unfortunately, Wordsworth's inspiration did not keep pace with 
his desire to write. Often, like a soldier marking time who goes 
through the motions of walking without getting anywhere, he pro- 
duced work of the stuffed-bird variety, that has every characteristic 
of the living thing but one, life. At other times he composed verses 
which, though awkward, might have been wrought into excellent 
poetry if they had undergone the laborious revision that some of his 
best pieces received. The blank verse produced at such times has 
much in common with the pseudo-Miltonic work of minor eight- 
eenth-century writers. Passages hke the following, for example, 
abound in The Excursion: 

A pomp 

Leaving behind of yellow radiance spread 

Over the mountain sides, in contrast bold 

With ample shadows, seemingly, no less 

Than those resplendent lights, his rich bequest. 

Those services, whereby attempt is made 
To lift the creature toward that eminence 
On which, now fallen, erewhile in majesty 
He stood; or if not so, whose top serene 
At least he feels 'tis given him to descry; 
Not without aspirations, evermore 
Returning, and injunctions from within 
Doubt to cast off and weariness; in trust 
That what the Soul perceives, if glory lost. 
May be, through pains and persevering hope, 
Recovered.! 

Most of Wordsworth's shorter unrimed pieces that are Miltonic are 
of this type. A single illustration will probably more than satisfy the 
reader : 

And yet more gladly thee would I conduct 
Through woods and spacious forests, — to behold 
There, how the Original of human art, 
Heaven-prompted Nature, measures and erects 
Her temples, fearless for the stately work. 
Though waves, to every breeze, its high-arched roof, 
And storms the pillars rock. But we such schools 
Of reverential awe will chiefly seek.^ 

Matthew Arnold's comment that Wordsworth "has no assured 
poetic style of his own," that "when he seeks to have a style he falls 
into ponderosity and pomposity," ^ may be the explanation of this 
kind of verse. Certainly it is true of many eighteenth-century poets 

1 iv. 1301-5; V. 297-307. 

'^ "A little onward lend thy guiding hand," 33-40. 

' Essays in Criticism, 2d series (1889), 155-6. 



I90 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

that when they exerted themselves to write well they grew turgid. 
But was not Wordsworth's trouble rather that "ponderosity and 
pomposity" were natural to him and became evident whenever he 
failed to exert himself, when he wrote without being in the mood for 
writing, when he handled subjects that had not fired his imagination 
or about which he did not feel with sufficient intensity? We know 
that two of his finest things, Michael and Laodamia, cost him a great 
deal of trouble, and that he wrote excellent sonnets so long as he 
found them difiicult to write; we also know that his conversation 
was apt to degenerate into long didactic monologues, and to contain 
such formal, bookish words that once when he was talking his grand- 
son exclaimed, "Grandpapa is reading without a book!"^ The 
faults of The Excursion may, therefore, be the most natural things in 
it, the defects that impressed all who talked with the poet and that 
only deep feeling and hard labor removed. 

Admirers of Wordsworth are Hkely to regard as his most charac- 
teristic blank verse one that shows practically no traces of Milton's 
influence, — the kind found in Tintern Abbey, Michael, and in most 
of the nature passages in The Prelude. It is easy, simple, and direct, 
but considered merely as style it usually lacks richness, distinction, 
variety, as well as the finer subtleties of cadence and flow; hence 
Arnold's complaint that Wordsworth "has no style." Illustrations 
of it need hardly be quoted, for any one can have them before him by 
recalling the descriptive passages he Hkes best in the lake poet's un- 
rimed pieces. It is our familiarity with these descriptions that leads 
us to think of the style in which they are written as characteristic of 
the poems as a whole. 

This non-Miltonic blank verse suffers just as the Miltonic does 
when the poet in Wordsworth goes to sleep and the pedagog or the 
preacher takes his pen. What then results is a quantity of prosaic, 
matter-of-fact lines, sometimes good enough as to thought, but lack- 
ing the imagination, the intensity of feehng, and the finality of 
phrasing which would lift them into poetry. Verse of this sort led 
Tennyson to remark that a typical Wordsworthian line would be 
"A Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman." - But it is impossible to parody a 
poet who himself wrote, 

And at the Hoop alighted, famous Inn. 

That rural castle, name now sUpped 
From my remembrance, where a lady lodged. 

1 Whately, in Leisure Hour, Oct. i, 1870, p. 652. "His mode of talking," says 
Whately, "sometimes resembled a moral declamation." Cf. below, p. 196, n. i. 

2 Hallam Tennyson, Tennyson and his Friends (1911), 264. 



WORDSWORTH I91 

As a preparatory act 
Of reverence done to the spirit of the place.* 

A longer extract will show still better how close to prose Words- 
worth's blank verse often comes : 

Yet for the general purposes of faith 
In Providence, for solace and support, 
We may not doubt that who can best subject 
The will to reason's law, can strictliest live 
And act in that obedience, he shall gain 
The clearest apprehension of those truths, 
Which unassisted reason's utmost power 
Is too infirm to reach. But, waiving this, 
And our regards confining within bounds 
Of less exalted consciousness, through which 
The very multitude are free to range. 
We safely may affirm that human life — 

But we, I think, may safely affirm with Arnold and Jeffrey that, 
"as a work of poetic style, ' This will never do.' " ^ 

It is the preponderance of such blank verse, or of the pseudo- 
Miltonic variety which prevailed in the eighteenth century, that 
makes The Excursion as a whole unread and unreadable. One reason 
why Wordsworth slipped into these prosaic styles is that the later, 
inferior books of The Prelude, all but the admirable first two books of 
The Excursion, and nearly all of the poorer short pieces in blank 
verse were written after the fire of his poetic inspiration had died 
down, only to reappear fitfully and at long intervals. Furthermore, 
The Excursion has but little to do with nature, Wordsworth's most 
certain source of inspiration, but is largely taken up with argument. 
Now, Wordsworth was not, like Goethe, a great thinker,^ or, like 
Emerson, a great seer, nor did he possess Dryden's power of rea- 
soning in verse. The few essential things of life he saw with great 
clearness and felt with unusual intensity, and because these things 
possessed a grandeur that touched his imagination and reached to 
the center of his being he could be deeply poetic when he dealt with 
them. They were the distilled essence of many hours of quiet reflec- 
tion, something very different from the philosophical system that he 
worked out with his reason. 

Wordsworth wrote one other type of blank verse, as rare in quality 
as in occurrence. This includes a few hundred lines of his noblest 

* Prelude, iii. 17, ix. 483-4; Excursion, vi. 89-90. 

2 Essays in Criticism, 2d series, 156. The Wordsworth passage is from The Excursion, 
V. 515-26. 

^ Unless it be in his prose discussions of the poet's art. 



192 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

utterance, his sublimest description, and his loftiest thought. Here 
are to be found his most Miltonic passages, and it is here that we 
best realize how deeply he had drunk at the fountain-head of English 
poetic blank verse and with what insistence the "voice whose sound 
was like the sea" kept ringing in his ears. Yet, for the very reason 
that these passages are imbued with the spirit of Paradise Lost, they 
are far from being slavish copies of its manner. The following lines, 
for example, are almost free from the inversions, parentheses, ap- 
positives, the use of one part of speech for another, and the similar 
mannerisms that disfigure most eighteenth-century unrimed poems: 

A single step, that freed me from the skirts 
Of the bUnd vapour, opened to my view 
Glory beyond all glory ever seen 
By waking sense or by the dreaming soul! 
The appearance, instantaneously disclosed, 
Was of a mighty city — boldly say 
A wilderness of buUding, sinking far 
And self-withdrawn into a boundless depth, 
Far sulking into splendour — without end! 
Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold, 
With alabaster domes, and silver spires, 
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high 
Uplifted; here, serene paviUons bright, 
In avenues disposed; there, towers begirt 
With battlements that on their restless fronts 
Bore stars — illumination of all gems! 

Wisdom and Spirit of the universe! 
Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought, 
That givest to forms and images a breath 
And everlasting motion.^ 

The organ tone in some of Wordsworth's loftier passages, as in those 
quoted below, is due partly to the Miltonic practice of introducing 
proper names for their imaginative suggestiveness and sonorous 
pomp: 

They — who had come elate as eastern hunters 
Banded beneath the Great Mogul, when he 
Erewhile went forth from Agra or Lahore, 
Rajahs and Omrahs in his train, intent 
To drive their prey enclosed within a ring 
Wide as a province. 

^ Excursion, ii. 830-45; Prelude, i. 401-4. To this class also belongs most of Yew- 
Trees, of Kilchurn Castle, and of the extract from Home at Grasmere prefixed to The 
Excursion. 



WORDSWORTH 1 93 

Tract more exquisitely fair 
Than that famed paradise of ten thousand trees, 
Or Gehol's matchless gardens, for deUght 
Of the Tartarian dynasty composed 
(Beyond that mighty wall, not fabulous, 
China's stupendous mound) by patient toil 
Of myriads and boon nature's lavish help.' 

It will be noticed that the second extract exhibits less of the man- 
ner and more of the mannerisms of Paradise Lost. These manner- 
isms creep not infrequently into Wordsworth's more exalted, just as 
they do into his more prosaic, blank verse, and for the same reasons. 
Either his imagination did not glow sufi&ciently to fuse his materials 
and get rid of the dross, or he did not hammer the Hues long enough 
to work out the blemishes and perfect the form. Sometimes, as in 
this passage, the Miltonic largeness of utterance is combined with 
touches of the Miltonic diction and style in a way surprisingly close 
to that of Paradise Lost: 

This is our high argument. 
— Such grateful haunts foregoing, if I oft 
Must turn elsewhere — to travel near the tribes 
And fellowships of men, and see ill sights 
Of madding passions mutually inflamed; 
Must hear Humanity in fields and groves 
Pipe soUtary anguish; or must hang 
Brooding above the fierce confederate storm 
Of sorrow, barricadoed evermore 
Within the walls of cities — may these sounds 
Have their authentic comment; that even these 
Hearing, I be not downcast or forlorn! ^ 

The Miltonic element in Wordsworth's diction is considerable, 
yet it is easily overlooked. For one thing, it is not expected: we 
think of the author of The Daffodils, Michael, and Tintern Abbey as a 
writer of simple, direct poems, often profound and sometimes mag- 
ical, but dealing in the main with nature and the quiet lives of 
humble people. The style usually impresses us as natural and flow- 
ing, so that we assume the language — which we rarely notice — to 
be equally simple. Then, too, we remember the poet's own declara- 
tion, "My purpose was to imitate, and, as far as possible, to adopt 

^ Prelitde, x. 17-22; viii. 75-81. 

2 Lines 71-82 of the passage prefixed to The Excursion (which constitute lines 824- 
35 of The Recluse, book i, Home at Grasmere). The extract is not typical, since the frag- 
mentary Recluse, though less pedestrian in style than The Excursion, is on the whole 
less formal than The Prelude. Traces of Paradise Lost are slight, but seldom long absent. 



194 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

the very language of men." ^ Yet, so far as his blank verse and other 
more serious work is concerned, this conception of Wordsworth's 
diction is quite mistaken, since, except in his earlier and simpler 
poems, his language is distinctly literary and often unduly learned. 
His Old Cumberla?id Beggar, for instance, although deahng in a 
simple way with a commonplace subject, contains language like this: 

All behold in him 
A silent monitor, which on their minds 
Must needs impress a transitory thought 
Of self-congratulation, to the heart 
Of each recalling his pecuhar boons. 
His charters and exemptions; and, perchance, 
Though he to no one give the fortitude 
And circumspection needful to preserve 
His present blessings, and to husband up 
The respite of the season, he, at least. 
And 'tis no vulgar service, makes them felt.'' 

True, this passage is not typical of all Wordsworth's poetry, but it is 
characteristic of a large part of his blank verse, particularly of the 
more formal and philosophical works like The Excursion and The 
Prelude. In these poems we are continually meeting such words as 
"abstrusest," "disjoin," "innocuously," "conglobated," "extrin- 
sic," "intervenient," "succedaneum," "admonishment," "pre- 
sage," "prelibation," "extravagate," "colloquies," "arbitrement," 
"patrimony," "subversion," "perturbation";^ and expressions Hke 
"preclude conviction," "erewhile my tuneful haunt," "monitory 
sound," "domestic carnage," "kindred mutations," " inveterately 
convolved." ^ There would be little objection to these words and 
phrases if they were merely unusual; the trouble is that they are 
with difficulty assimilated in poetry and that Wordsworth rarely 
succeeds in assimilating them.^ Many poets, Swinburne and Francis 

1 Preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (Poems, Oxford ed., 936). 

* Lines 122-32. 

' Excursion, i. 65 (also iii. 702, ix. 234, and Prehide, i. 44, vi. 297, ix. 397, xii. 132); 
iii. 58 (also Prelude, viii. 436, xii. 232, and in one other poem), 516, 974; Prehide, i. 545 
(and viii. 624,xiii. 218) ;ii. 201, 214; iv. 125 (also vii. 546, x. 77, and in two other poems); 
V. 36 ("presageful" occurs in the poem beginning "Pastor and Patriot," 4), 245, 503; ix. 
470; x. 127, 157, 268 ("sub vert "is used in six places) ;xi. 373(andineight other places). 

* Prelude, x. 165 (there are seven similar instances of the use of "preclude"), 244, 
324 (there are four similar instances) , 356, xiv. 94; Yew-Trees, 18 (see the whole passage 
quoted on p. 185 above). 

' "Words in themselves," as Mr. J. L. Lowes has shown (Convention and Revolt in 
Poetry, Boston, 1919, p. 193), "... are neither poetic nor unpoetic. They become 
poetic, or they remain unassimilated prose, according as the poet's imaginative energy 
is or is not sufficiently powerful to absorb them." Wordsworth usually employed words 
like those mentioned above when his imaginative energy was low. 



WORDSWORTH 1 95 

Thompson, for example, use stranger words than these and more of 
them, and of course Shakespeare and Milton employ a much wider 
vocabulary than Wordsworth did; but these writers introduce un- 
famiUar expressions for poetical effect, whereas Wordsworth's diction 
is stiff, bookish, and lacking in imaginative or emotional appeal. 
Words like those given above attract attention by being uncommon, 
but serve no good purpose. 

Worse still, the language of The Excursion and The Prelude is often 
absurdly ill adapted to the persons who are supposed to be speaking 
it or to the subjects with which it deals. This is what makes the 
picnic described in The Excursion such a lugubrious festivity. The 
party consisted of the Solitary, the Wanderer, the Poet, and the 
Pastor, — a kind of later Job with his three friends; the Pastor's 
wife, "graceful was her port"; their daughter, a "gladsome child"; 
their son and "his shy compeer," boys of "jocund hearts" and with 
"animation" in their "mien." ^ We know little of what was said at 
the picnic, but on the previous day "grateful converse" of the fol- 
lowing variety was carried on : 

"In your retired domain, 
Perchance you not unfrequently have marked 
A Visitor." . . . 

The Solitary answered: "Such a Form 
Full well I recollect." 

The supper, we are told, was merry, but the description of it does not 
sound exhilarating. All 

partook 

A choice repast — served by our young companions 

With rival earnestness and kindred glee; 

after which 

Launched from our hands the smooth stone skimmed the lake, 
and 

Rapaciously we gathered flowery spoils. 

In view of these solemn relaxations, we are not surprised to learn 
that the abode of the Pastor and his gamesome family was ap- 
proached by a path of "pure cerulean gravel," and to read of the 
edifice itself. 

Like image of solemnity, conjoined 
With feminine allurement soft and fair, 
The mansion's self displayed.^ 

1 viii. SOI, 496; ix. 431, 475; viii. 572. 

2 viii. 58; vi. 95-7, 102-3; ix. 529-31, 532, 538; viii. 452, 4S9-6i. 



196 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Yet the author of these lines wished that his poetry might "keep the 
Reader in the company of flesh and blood" ! ^ 

But this is not the worst. Wordsworth is capable of employing 
language not only unsuitable but at times even bad. Although he 
said concerning ''what is usually called poetic diction," "As much 
pains has been taken to avoid it as is ordinarily taken to produce it; 
this has been done ... to bring my language near to the language 
of men," he used hundreds of phrases that not only were never heard 
in the language of men but had become extremely hackneyed even in 
poetry.^ Much better illustrations of the vicious poetic diction of the 
eighteenth century can be found in his own later work than in the 
sonnet by Gray which he quotes for the purpose. He speaks, for in- 
stance, of an actor as "a proficient of the tragic scene"; the stars he 
calls "heaven's ethereal orbs," sunshine "the solar beam," eyes 
"these visual orbs," birds "the feathered kinds," a lake a "crystal 
mere," a stage-coach an "itinerant vehicle," a gun "the deadly 
tube," an ass "the brute In Scripture sanctified." ^ Even the unob- 
jectionable words Wales and Welsh he never uses, but employs 
Cambria and Cambrian in their places seven times; Albion he men- 
tions five and Caledonia (or Caledon) three times. Occasionally he 
makes use of elaborate periphrases, as in his account of a sore throat, 

The winds of March, smiting insidiously, 
Raised in the tender passage of the throat 
Viewless obstruction; 

or when he says the "soil endured a transfer in the mart Of dire 
rapacity," meaning the land was sold, or 

We beheld 
The shining giver of the day diffuse 
His brightness, 

meaning we saw the sun shine ; or when he tells us that an old man 
"had clomb aloft to delve the moorland turf For winter fuel" instead 

^ Preface to Lyrical Ballads {Poems, Oxford ed., 936). The pompous absurdity of 
much of Wordsworth's diction is equally characteristic of his prose and was a marked 
feature of his conversation. According to Edward Whately, who saw a good deal of him 
at one time, "Both his sentences and his words were too long and too high-flown to suit 
the subject he was discussing ... he used the most high-flown language in speaking of 
the most common-place, ordinary affairs of life" {Leisure Hour, Oct. i, 1870, p. 652). 

2 Preface to Lyrical Ballads {Poems, Oxford ed., 936). Blake commented, "I do not 
know who wrote these Prefaces; they are very mischievous, and direct contrary to 
Wordsworth's own practice" (Crabb Robinson's "Reminiscences," quoted in Arthur 
Symons's William Blake, 1907, p. 300). 

^ Excursion, iii. 466, 662 (and cf. Pilgrim'' s Dream, 23); iv. 447 (also Evening Walk, 
203), 180, 450 (cf. Home at Grasmere, 203, MS.); v. 82 (and ix. 701); Prelude, viii. 544; 
Home at Grasmere, 266 ("sentient tube" occurs in the Italian Itinerant, 23), 506-7. 



WORDSWORTH 1 97 

of saying he had gone to dig peat, or speaks of "the impediment of 
rural cares" when he means farm-work.^ From the conventional, 
hackneyed expressions common in eighteenth-century poetry, the 
crystal-font-purple-bloom-vernal-breeze sort of thing, Wordsworth 
is almost entirely free, but he does annoy us by his fondness for 
"yon," "haply," "albeit," "erewhile," "corse" (for corpse), and 
the like. 

All that is objectionable in Wordsworth's diction — the use of 
learned and grandiose words and of pompous circumlocutions in 
place of famihar terms — is marked in the blank verse of the eight- 
eenth century. It is such phraseology that irritates the reader of 
Thomson, Young, and Cowper and is even more noticeable in the 
work of their less gifted contemporaries. That Wordsworth should 
take some features of his diction, as well as of his style and versifica- 
tion, from the writers who immediately preceded him was only 
natural. It is easy to forget that he was nearer to these men than we 
are to him or to Shelley or Byron, nearer to most of them than we 
are to Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold. He was born in 1770, the 
year in which the Deserted Village was published; he was fifteen 
when The Task and Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides appeared, and 
throughout the period in which he was forming his taste and produc- 
ing his best work it was principally eighteenth-cent\u-y writings that 
people read. Indeed, aside from Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, 
hardly any other EngHsh poetry was accessible to them. Only the 
force of Wordsworth's personaHty and the depth of his convictions 
kept him from being dominated by his immediate predecessors. 

Is it Hkely that the older poets affected his diction, except oc- 
casionally through the borrowing of single words? He was familiar 
with Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare, as well as with many of 
the seventeenth- and most of the leading eighteenth-century verse 
and prose writers, and may have taken from one of several sources 
any of his uncommon words or peculiar uses of words. Yet the mat- 
ter is not so difficult as it seems; for, since Milton's poetry was more 
familiar to him than anything else in English literature (except pos- 
sibly Shakespeare's plays), Milton's use of a word would be the one 
to Hnger in his memory. Furthermore, Chaucer, Spenser, and 
Shakespeare, the other poets most likely to influence him, would 
certainly not have turned him towards learned and grandiose terms 
of Latin origin, but Milton would lead him in precisely this direction. 
When Wordsworth speaks of an "edifice" or a "habitation," or of 
"the embowered abode — our chosen seat," or of "stripHngs . . . 

1 Excursion, vii. 683-5; "i- 917-18, 540-42; ii. 787-8; vii. 736. 



198 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

graced with shining weapons," ^ is he not doing just what was done, 
what had to be done, in the epic of the fall of man? Many words 
that are quite unobjectionable in Paradise Lost would sound pom- 
pous and absurd in The Excursion. 

But we are not left to surmises in the matter, for one of Words- 
worth's acquaintances wrote, "His veneration for Milton was so 
great, that if that poet used a particular word in a particular sense, 
he would quote his authority to justify himself when his wife or 
daughter objected to its employment in his own poems." ^ Instances 
of this habit are to be found in his letters. Writing to Sir George 
Beaumont, he remarked that, although Bowles disapproved of the 
word "ravishment," "yet it has the authority of all the first-rate 
poets, for instance, Milton."^ In another letter he justified the 
use of "immediately" in verse by noting that it appeared "to have 
sufficient poetical authority, even the highest," and then quoted 
from Paradise Lost.^ It is probable, therefore, that "adamantine," 
"compeers," "darkling," "begirt," "empyrean," "encincture," 
"fulgent," "effulgence," "refulgent," "gratulant," "griesly," 
"massy," "ministrant," "panoply," "Tartarean," "terrene," "un- 
apparent," "vermeil," "welter," and the hke were derived from 
Paradise Lost. Many words employed in a peculiar sense or in an 
unusual way he seems also to have taken from Milton: "audience" 
(of readers), "commerce" (intercourse), "covert" (shelter), "des- 
cant" (of a bird's song), "essential" (having substance), "in- 
cumbent" (resting on or bending over), "inform" (form within), 
"instinct with" (impelled or animated by), "lapse" (of a stream), 
"oblivious" (used actively), "paramount" (as a substantive), 
"principalities" (order of angels), "profound" (as a substantive), 
"punctual" (hke a point), "rout" (a disorderly crowd), "sagacious" 
(keen-scented), "use" (as an intransitive verb), "vast" (as a sub- 
stantive), "viewless" (invisible).^ 

It would, of course, be folly to explain Wordsworth's language 
altogether by reference to eighteenth-century writers and Milton, 
that is, to overlook the importance of his own personality. Any 
poet who is fond of abstract speculation, who is inclined to be for- 
mal and impersonal, who has httle sensuous richness in his nature, 

^ lb. iii. 521; vii. 766-7. He uses "edifice" seven times and "habitation" twenty- 
two. 

2 E. Whately, as above, p. 182, n. 2. 
' Nov. 16, 1811. 

* Te Francis Wrangham, July 12, 1807. 

* For the occurrence of these words, see pp. 618-20 below, and Lane Cooper's 
Concordance to Wordsworth (191 1). 



WORDSWORTH 1 99 

and who "wishes to be regarded as a teacher or as nothing," will not 
employ the vocabulary of Keats ; and if he composes works 

On man, on Nature, and on Human Life, 

he will probably use language that is somewhat learned and stately. 
It would have been so even if the author of The Excursion had never 
read Paradise Lost; his knowledge of the epic only strengthened his 
natural tendencies. Not that Wordsworth intentionally imitated 
the diction of Milton and his followers, but that he adopted more of 
it than he realized. He was so accustomed to a formal style stiffened 
with words from the Greek and Latin that he easily slipped into it 
when he was not on his guard. Except when he was dealing with na- 
ture or with simple, narrative subjects, he preferred the sound of 
lines that contained learned words and somewhat pompous phrases; 
but was it not because of his familiarity with the stately periods and 
the formal, Latinic diction of Milton and his imitators that such 
lines pleased him? 

Wordsworth would himself have been the last person to deny that 
he was influenced by Milton. He tells us that he was inspired to 
write his first sonnets by the "soul-animating strains" of his pred- 
ecessor, and we have seen that he tooks pains to make "public 
acknowledgment of . . . the innumerable obligations which," he 
said, "as a Poet and a Man, I am under to our great fellow-country- 
man."^ He seems, indeed, to have felt that every poet should look 
to Milton for guidance. At the beginning of his career, it may be 
remembered, he had been impressed with the conviction that there 
were four English poets whom he must continually have before him 
as examples, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton; and in 
the preface to the 1815 edition of his poems he wrote, "The grand 
store-house of enthusiastic and meditative Imagination, of poetical, 
as contradistinguished from human and dramatic Imagination, is 
the prophetic and lyrical parts of the holy Scriptures, and the works 
of Milton, to which I cannot forbear to add those of Spenser." 

Yet he was almost certainly unconscious of the extent to which 
Milton influenced him. If he thought of the matter at all, he may 
have reflected that his verse was free from those peculiarities of 
Paradise Lost which marred eighteenth-century unrimed poetry, — 
as, indeed, to a large extent it was. Inversion he and his contem- 
poraries doubtless regarded not as a trait peculiar to Paradise Lost, 
but as a characteristic of all good blank verse. Then, too, his very 
resemblance to Milton would have blinded him to his indebtedness, 

1 See below, p. 529, and above, p. 181. 



200 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

for it is hard to realize how much one owes to a lifelong friend of 
similar views but greater powers. To be sure, though he may not 
have known how numerous they were, he must have been aware 
of the many phrases and of some of the more unusual words that 
he borrowed; but such things would not have troubled him. He 
regarded Milton's authority as supreme, at least in diction, and 
accordingly may have thought that borrowing from him was like 
taking words from the dictionary. The similarity between his own 
exalted, orotund passages and those of Paradise Lost he undoubtedly 
felt and felt with pride. 

Nor need those of us who look upon Wordsworth as one of the 
chief glories of English literature be disturbed to learn that he de- 
rived from another some of the materials and methods he used in the 
lofty building he erected. Surely one of the uses, and one of the best 
uses, of great poets is to furnish inspiration and guidance for those 
who come after them. This is not the least of the important func- 
tions that Paradise Lost has been performing for the last two and a 
half centuries. In Wordsworth's case it accomplished its purpose the 
more easily and effectively because what it offered was similar to 
what he himself had. Its influence on his poetry does not seem, for 
example, like Gothic vaulting in a Greek temple, for it did not tend 
to deflect him from his course, but merely strengthened him in it by 
showing him how to pursue it. That is why the last of the great 
Elizabethans became a power with one of the first of the great 
romanticists, why Wordsworth is the most Miltonic poet since 
Milton. 



CHAPTER X 

KEATS 

It is generally agreed that Spenser and Leigh Hunt made Keats a 
poet, but it is not so generally understood that they failed to com- 
plete their task, that they left him a rather formless, languorous, 
saccharine, and at times silly poet. He was naturally romantic, de- 
lighting in color rather than form, in richness rather than restraint, 
in ideal beauty rather than reality, and craving "a life of sensations 
rather than of thoughts." These traits were exaggerated by his 
youth, his admiration for Spenser, and his intimacy with Hunt, and 
as a result his first volume contains a number of rambling and rather 
pointless poems, with many rimes of the kisses-blisses sort and but 
one piece of real distinction. Likewise the second publication, En- 
dymion, is a luxuriant wilderness, "the author's intention appearing 
to be," as even the generous Shelley wrote, "that no person should 
possibly get to the end of it." ^ Fortunately Keats had himself come 
to realize these defects, and in the preface to Endymion had ac- 
knowledged that the reader of his romance "must soon perceive 
great inexperience, immaturity, and every error denoting a feverish 
attempt, rather than a deed accomplished." 

In this same preface the poet expressed the hope of writing another 
work that should deal with "the beautiful mythology of Greece." 
This was Hyperion, which was originally conceived as a romance,^ 
probably rimed and otherwise similar to Endymion, though "more 
naked and Grecian." But, before he came to write, a new planet 
swam into his ken which not only changed his plans but affected all 
his subsequent poetry. This transforming power was Paradise Lost. 
Keats had known Milton's poetry from boyhood, and had bor- 
rowed from the minor pieces and even from the epic; but the latter 
had meant little to him.^ He ' had heard of it by the hearing of the 

^ To Charles and James Oilier, Sept. 6, 1819. 

^ "The time would be better spent in writing a new Romance I have in my eye for 
next summer" (letter to Haydon, Sept. 28, 1817). Colvin, in his life of Keats (1918, 
P- 334)5 suggests that this "romance" may possibly have been the Eve of St. Agnes. 
' His lines, 

You first taught me all the sweets of song . . . 
Miltonian storms, and more, Miltonian tenderness; 
Michael in arms, and more, meek Eve's fair slenderness 
{Epistle to Charles Cowden Clarke, 53, 58-9, written in September, 1816, but referring 
to a period several years earlier), show little appreciation of Milton's real greatness. 



202 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

ear but now his eye saw it.' Blinded by the beauty of the Spen- 
serians, he had not possessed sufficient maturity to appreciate the 
consummate art and "severe magnificence of Paradise Lost^' until 
his attention was called to it by his friends Severn and Bailey, both 
ardent Miltonians. If, as Mr. de Selincourt thinks, the admiration 
for Paradise Lost began in the summer of 1817, when Keats was but 
half through Endymion,^ the epic may have been an important ele- 
ment in bringing him to a realization of the " mawkishness " of his 
early work. It seems quite as likely, however, that he had himself 
begun to feel the weakness of his verse and was half consciously 
looking for help before writing his second long piece, when at the 
suggestion of his friends he took up Paradise Lost and found there 
what he needed. He could hardly have done better. The poem 
possesses the color, the richness, the imaginative appeal, and the 
prosodic beauty that he craved, as well as the vigor, the classic re- 
straint, and the sublimity that his own verse had lacked. 

He plunged into Milton's work with characteristic enthusiasm 
and, to use his own word, ' feasted ' upon it.^ ''When I see you," he 
wrote to Bailey, "the first thing I shall do will be to read that about 
Milton and Ceres, and Proserpine"; ^ and later he exclaimed, "I am 
convinced more and more, every day, that fine writing is, next to 
fine doing, the top thing in the world; the Paradise Lost becomes a 
greater wonder."'* "It is unique," he declared, "... the most re- 
markable production of the world." ^ Milton became to him the 
standard in poetry; for, when weighing Wordsworth's genius, he 
thought it would be " a help, in the manner of gold being the meridian 
Line of worldly wealth," to consider "how he differs from Milton."^ 

^ Keats's Poems (2d ed., 1907), 489, 437. This very thorough and admirable edition 
of Keats contains the best discussion we have of the influence of Milton upon any 
English poet. Though I differ from Mr. de Selincourt on many. points, I am under 
great obligations to him. So far as I can discover, the only basis fbr the opinion men- 
tioned above is that in September, 181 7, Keats visited Bailey at Oxford and while 
there worked on the third book of Endymion, which, according to Mr. de Selincourt, 
contains phrases that imply a recent study of Paradise Lost (see pp. 437, 439, 440, of his 
edition). It seems to me, however, that the expressions mentioned are either dubious 
or unimportant, and that passages which recall the epic quite as strongly as these may 
be found in Keats's earlier work. The reference to Adam's dream (in a letter to Bailey, 
Nov. 22, 181 7, not mentioned by De Selincourt) certainly suggests a recent reading of 
Milton's poem, with which, to be sure, we know that Keats was familiar before 181 6. 
-- ^ Letter to Reynolds, April 27, 1818. 

^ July 18, 1818. Later in the same letter he quoted from Camus. 
a ^ To Reynolds, Aug. 25, 1819. Ten days before he had used almost the same words 

in a letter to Bailey. There is another reference to Milton in the letter to Reynolds, 
and a letter to James Rice of March 24, 1818, is filled with humorous remarks about 
Milton, Salmasius, and others. 

* Letter to George Keats, Sept. 17-27, 1819 (this pirt probably written on the 2ist). 

^ Letter to Reynolds, May 3, 1818. Earlier in this letter he quoted a line and a half 
from Paradise Lost (see note i, p. 203, below). 



KEATS 203 

This ''feast" upon Milton, which lasted for a year and a half or 
two years, profoundly affected the young and unusually sensitive 
poet. It gave him an admirable familiarity with the work of his 
predecessor,^ as well as a rare understanding of its spirit,^ and left 
him, so far as poetry was concerned, another man. The first fruits 
of the change were shown in the transformation of Hyperion, which 
was composed while the feast was at its height. For the romance 
which Keats planned developed into an austere epic, obviously mod- 
elled upon Paradise Lost} He himself acknowledged the indebted- 
ness, as we shall see later; but in any case there could be no doubt 
about it, for the poem is fundamentally Miltonic. Nor is it a ques- 
tion merely of certain stylistic quaHties, of some unusual words and 
a few borrowed phrases, but of the entire conception, tone, and 
handling of the work. Instead of copying Milton's peculiarities, 
Keats, one might almost say, tried to write a poem as Milton would 
have written it, and as a result Hyperion is more like Paradise Lost 
than is any other great poem we have. The debt of The Seasons, 
great as it is, is limited to expression, — Milton would never have 
written anything like it; nor is it conceivable that he should have 
produced The Task or The Prelude. He might have composed 
Hyperion. 

To realize how Miltonic the poem is we have only to compare it ■ 
with other epics. Keats is not at all Homeric; his gods, for example, 
have almost nothing in common with the very human deities of the 
Iliad and the Odyssey, nor has he the action^ the swiftness and buoy- 
ancy, of the Grecian. He leaves an impression, as Milton does in the 
main, of characters, places, and scenes rather than of events; and he 
is concerned entirely, as Milton is largely, not with mortals, as are 
other epic poets, but with gods and demigods. This is of course one 
reason why both poems lack human interest. The entire action of 
Hyperion, furthermore, raised as it is above human passions, has the 

^ This appears in the words and phrases he borrowed from Milton: see Appendix A, 
below. His familiarity with passages that do not usually attract attention is significant. 
In the letter to Reynolds just referred to (May 3, 1818) he quotes, quite casually, 

Notus and Afer, black with thundrous clouds 
From Serraliona 

(P. Z., X. 702-3); and in one to Dilke (Sept. 21, 1818) he writes, "Imagine 'the hateful 
siege of contraries' — if I think of fame ... it seems a crime to me" (cf. P. L., ix. 
119-22). 

^ As shown by his penetrating comments on Paradise Lost and its author (see the 
"Notes" in Forman's edition of his works, iii. 17-30). 

^ Any one who thinks that Keats would not consciously have patterned his work 
after another poem should remember that the versification of Lamia is, in Mr. de 
Selincourt's words (p. 453), "closely modelled upon the Fables of Dryden." 



204 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

largeness, the exalted dignity, the solemnity, the aloofness, which 
are particularly associated with Paradise Lost. Here are the pic- 
tures of Saturn and Thea : 

Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went, 
No further than to where his feet had stray'd, 
And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground 
His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, 
Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed. . . . 

She was a Goddess of the infant world; 

By her in stature the tall Amazon 

Had stood a pigmy's height: she would have ta'en 

Achilles by the hair and bent his neck; 

Or with a finger stay'd Ixion's wheel. 

Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx, 

Pedestal'd haply in a palace court, 

When sages look'd to Egypt for their lore.^ 

These are figures worthy to have sat at the great council in Pande- 
monium. 

Keats's style, as may be seen from the passages just quoted, is 
marked by the absence of prettiness; it has the stately dignity and 
the condensation that distinguish Paradise Lost. Yet these lines are 
by no means so Miltonic as many others; in fact, except for the 
phrase "pedestal'd haply," the more technical marks of Milton's 
influence do not appear at all. Nor are they anywhere prominent in 
the poem. The contorted style which eighteenth-century writers re- 
garded as Miltonic, Keats saw to be a cheap imitation and instinc- 
tively avoided. Yet two of the most obvious characteristics of 
Paradise Lost, those without which Miltonic blank verse can hardly 
be written, inversion of the word-order and the use of adjectives for 
adverbs, he employed. In fact, he said himself that ''there were too 
many Miltonic inversions" in his epic.^ Here are six in the first 
twenty-five Hnes I open to: "influence benign on planets pale," 
"Deity supreme," "thine eyes eterne," "chariot fierce," "triumph 
calm," "gold clouds metropoHtan." ^ Of the use of adjectives where 
one would expect adverbs there are over twenty cases Hke "rumbles 
reluctant," "crept gradual," "I here idle hsten"; * and occasionally 
other parts of speech are shifted about. ^ Hyperion also gets a Mil- 

1 i. 15-19, 26-33. '' Letter to Reynolds, Sept. 22, 1819. ^ i. 108-29. 

* i. 61, 260; iii. 106. See also i. 11, 94, 222, 308, 357; ii. 51, 74, 144, 164, 250, 284, 
324, 329, 377, 388; iii. IS, 49, 52, 53, 74- 

5 As in "sphere them round" (i. 117), "space region'd" (i. 119), "made . . . His 
eyes to fever out" (i. 138, cf. ii. 102), " how engine our wrath" (ii. 161), "antheming a 
lonely grief" (iii. 6), "Apollo anguish'd" (iii. 130), "voices of soft proclaim" (i. 130), 
"with fierce convulse" (iii. 129), "stubborn'd with iron" (ii. 17). In "foam'd along 



KEATS 205 

tonic ring from the presence of condensed or elliptical expressions 
like "thus brief," "uncertain where," "though feminine," "all pros- 
trate else," "neighbour'd close," "what can I?", "all calm," "this 
too indulged tongue," ^ and from constructions like these, 

Save what solemn tubes, 
Blown by the serious Zephyrs, gave of sweet 
And wandering sounds.^ 

At whose joys . . . 
I, Coelus, wonder, how they came and whence; 
And at the fruits thereof what shapes they be.' 

At times, also, one is reminded of Milton by an unbroken series of 
adjectives, as "nerveless, listless, dead, Unsceptred"; or by a list of 
proper names like 

Coeus, and Gyges, and Briareiis, 

Typhon, and Dolor, and Porphyrion.^ 

Words and phrases from the "Chief of organic numbers" will be 
found throughout Keats's work,^but borrowings from Paradise Lost 
are naturally much more common in Hyperion than in the other 
poems. Except in such borrowings, the vocabulary of Keats's epic, 
though of course less conversational and more classic than that of 
his lyric and romantic pieces, is less affected by Milton's than might 
be expected. What would be the most important influence upon it, 
if we could be sure the practice was derived from Milton, is that in 
Hyperion Keats for the first time makes extensive use of adjectives 
formed by adding -ed to nouns.^ Whether or not such adjectives 
— "orbed," "lion-thoughted," "mountained," "mouthed," etc. — 
come from Milton, with whom they are common, they are at least 
a great improvement over those in -y, "orby," "gulfy," "foody," 
"flamy," and the like, which are unpleasantly frequent in Keats's 
early work.^ 

By . . . winged creatures " (ii. 234-5) an intransitive verb is used transitively. Note 
also the adjectives formed from nouns by the addition of -ed (see text above). 

1 i. 153; ii. 9, SS, 65, 74, 160, 204, 298. 

2 i. 206-8; cf. P. L., i. 182-3, ii- 20-21, 

Save what the glimmering of these livid flames 
Casts pale and dreadful. 
With what besides, in counsel or in fight, 
Hath been achieved of merit. 
' i. 312-16; cf. P. L., ii. 990, "I know thee, stranger, who thou art." 

* i. 18-19; ii. 19-20. 

* They have been carefully noted by his editors, and have for convenience been 
collected below in Appendix A. 

8 This obligation is pointed out in W. T. Arnold's edition of Keats's works (1884), 
pp. xxxiv-xxxvi, where a large number of Milton's adjectives in -ed are also quoted. 
^ Mr. de Selincourt is undoubtedly right in believing that Milton's influence "is 



206 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

One other possible relation between the two poems, to which all 
writers on the subject have called attention, is the similarity of the 
assembly of the Titans to the council in Pandemonium. It seems to 
me, however, that the resemblances are so superficial that they 
would never have been noticed if the conception of the Titans and 
the general tone and style of the poem had not been decidedly Mil- 
tonic. To be sure, each is an assembly of fallen immortals, at which, 
as might be expected, there are several speeches and some differ- 
ences of opinion; but the two gatherings are otherwise quite unUke. 
The meeting of the Titans is not pre-arranged, no one calls it or 
presides over it, no plans are discussed and no action is decided on; 
the account simply stops at the arrival of the sun-god. It is hard to 
see wherein Keats could have made his assembly any less like Mil- 
ton's if he had tried. 

Hyperion is unfinished. Although it is one of Keats's greatest 
works, and probably the noblest fragment in English poetry, it was 
abandoned. 

"There were too many Miltonic inversions in it," he complained to 
Reynolds; "Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful, or, rather, 
artist's humour. I wish to give myself up to other sensations. English 
ought to be kept up. It may be interesting to you to pick out some lines 
from Hyperion, and put a mark -f to the false beauty proceeding from 
art, and one 1 1 to the true voice of feeling. Upon my soul, 'twas imagina- 

shown far more in allusion and . . . cadence, than by the borrowing of definitely Mil- 
tonic words" (p. 582). Indeed, while the words in his valuable "Glossary" do in 
general point to this influence and to that of the Elizabethans, only the few given on 
page 624 below are, in my opinion, likely to have had their origin in definite passages 
of the epic or the 1645 volum.e. It is probable, however, as he suggests, that " adorant," 
"aspirant," "penetrant," "cirque-couchant," and "ministrant" were formed in imi- 
tation of "congratulant," "volant," "couchant," "ministrant," and the like in Panidise 
Lost, and that Milton's practice may have led to the use of an adjective for a ncun in 
"the hollow vast" {Endymion, iii. 120, cf. ii. 240, ili. 593, etc., and P. L., vi. 203); to 
the use of verbs as nouns in "there was . . . fear in her regard" (Hyperion, i. 37, cf. 
P. L., iv. 877, X. 866, etc.), "he made retire From his companions" [Lamia, i. 230-31, 
cf. "bowers of soft retire," Song of Four Fairies, 6, and P. L., xi. 267), "at shut of eve" 
{Hyperion, ii. 36, and "The day is gone," 5, cf. P. L., ix. 278); and to the turning of 
nouns into verbs or participles in "who could paragon The . . . choir" [Sleep and 
Poetry, 172-3, cf. P. L., x. 426), "a . . . tree Pavilions him in bloom" (Endymion, ii. 
55-6, cf. P. L., xi. 215), "her enemies havock'd at her feet" (King Stephen, I. ii. 23, cf. 
P. L., X. 617), "lackeying my counsel" {Otho, I. i. 97, cf. Conius, 455), "like legioned 
soldiers" (Endymion, ii. 43, cf. "legion'd fairies," Eve of St. Agnes, xix. 6), "orbing 
along" (Otlio, IV. i. 79, cf. "orbed brow," etc., Endymion, i. 616, etc., and P. L., vi. 
543), "pedestal'd ... in a palace court" (Hyperion, i. 32, cf. "image pedestall'd so 
high," Fall of Hyperion, i. 299). In the case of "argent," "disparted," "drear," "dul- 
cet," "empty of," "freshet," "lucent," "parle," "ramping," "slumberous," "spume," 
and some other words, for most of which Mr. de Selincourt gives several possible 
sources, it seems to me impossible to be certain of any single origin. 



KEATS 207 

tion — I cannot make the distinction — Every now and then there is a 
Miltonic intonation." ^ To his brother he expressed it thus: "The Para- 
dise Lost, though so fine in itseK, is a corruption of our language. It should 
be kept as it is, unique, a curiosity, a beautiful and grand curiosity, the 
most remarkable production of the world; a northern dialect accommo- 
dating itself to Greek and Latin inversions and intonations. The purest 
English, I think — or what ought to be the purest — is Chatterton's. . . . 
I prefer the native music of it to Milton's, cut by feet. I have but lately 
stood on my guard against Milton. Life to him would be death to me. 
Miltonic verse cannot be written, but is the verse of art. I wish to devote 
myseK to another verse alone." ^ 

The difficulty in determining just what Keats meant by these 
utterances, with their failure to discriminate between style and lan- 
guage and their curious praise for the purity of Chatterton's manu- „ 
factured language, is probably due to a vagueness in his own mind. ' 
It must be remembered that he wrote them, not in a carefully-worded 
preface, but in familiar letters presumably composed carelessly and ^ 
in haste and in the mood that happened to be dominant at the time. 
By taking simply the parts that are clear and interpreting them 
literally, we arrive at the easy, definite, and commonly-accepted 
idea that the poem was abandoned because of its excessive use of 
such external Miltonisms as inversion. But so great a poem could 
hardly have been laid aside merely on account of a number of " Greek 
and Latin inversions and intonations," which as a matter of fact 
were not particularly numerous and might easily have been removed. 
Besides, such Latinisms are quite as characteristic of Wordsworth's "^ 
best work — which Keats sincerely admired — as of Hyperion, and 
are indeed to be found in the noblest English blank verse. 

Why, then, was it discontinued? Clearly, because of some feeling 
of constraint begotten by its Miltonic character. Yet it may be that 
Keats confused the fundamental similarity to Paradise Lost with 
some of the superficial marks of that similarity.^ The pith of his re- 
marks is contained in the clause,'^ 'Miltonic verse cannot be written 
but in an artful, or, rather, artist's humour," that is, with self- 

1 Letter of Sept. 22, 1819. The reason alleged in the publishers' advertisement, that 
the reception given to Endymion "discouraged the author from proceeding," Keats 
himself branded as a "lie" (see De Selincourt's edition, p. 487). 

^ To George Keats, Sept. 17-27, 1819, the part quoted presumably being written on 
the 2ist. In the letter to Reynolds noticed above he praised Chatterton's "genuine 
English Idiom in English words." 

^ As Robert Bridges remarks (Keats, 32-5), Keats "attributes his dissatisfaction to 
the style; but one cannot read to the end without a conviction that the real hindrance 
lay deeper. ... he had not abused inversion in Hyperion." 



) 



2o8 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

conscious effort as distinguished from natural self-expression, from 
the poet's ''easy unpremeditated verse." As a result, "the true 
voice of feeling" seemed to him to be killed by ''the false beauty 
proceeding from art"; he felt constrained and the poem seemed arti- 
ficial. This "artful, or, rather, artist's humour" he attributed to 
the lack of "genuine English Idiom in English words"; but if he had 
removed the foreign idiom and words could he have completed the 

^^,work? Apparently not. He seems to have gone over it marking its 
superficial Miltonisms, and was baffled by the result. "I cannot 
make the distinction," he exclaimed ■ — "Every now and then there 
is a Miltonic intonation — But I cannot make the division properly. 
The fact is, I must take a walk." Does not this indicate that he 

d failed to find the root of the difficulty, that he was troubled because 
removing the foreign words, idioms, and inversions did not remove 
the "false beauty proceeding from art" or the general Miltonic im- 
\ pression the poem produces? He was right in standing on his guard 
Against Milton, and in thinking, "Life to him would be death to 
me"; but he apparently saw later that an influence so portentous to 
originality must go deeper than words and idioms. He might have 
inverted the inversions, changed the classical constructions, and 
dropped the foreign words if he had wished, but there would have 

• remained the austere restraint, the impersonality and aloofness, the 
lack of color, warmth, and human interest, which deadened "the 
true voice of feeling." These qualities were not natural to him; he 
could assume them for a time, but the farther he proceeded in the 
poem the more conscious he grew of their constraint, until at last he 
found it intolerable. He came to feel that his enthusiasm for Para- 
dise Lost had carried him out of his natural bent and led him to 
attempt a kind of work not suited to his powers.^ 

And he was right. For the greatness of Hyperion should not blind 
us, any more than it did him, to its defects. Nothing really happens 
in it; the central incident, the assembly of the Titans, to which the 
meeting of Thea and Saturn and in a way the account of Hyperion 
lead up, comes to nothing. No course of action is even discussed. 
So far as one can see, the intention is simply to introduce more char- 
acters and give a further picture of the fallen gods. To be sure, each 
of these scenes, as well as the deification of Apollo, does prepare for 
later action, but in what other epic is so Httle accomplished or even 

^ The theory that Keats's ill health and hopeless love for Fanny Brawne made it 
impossible for him to go on with Hyperion fails to take account of the reason the poet 
himself gave, or to explain how, after abandoning his epic, he was able to compose most 
of his best work, including a piece as long as Lamia. 



KEATS 209 

planned in the first nine hundred lines? ^ Much noble description, 
many lofty speeches, Keats has certainly given us, but Hyperion is 
supposed to be a narrative poem. In reality it is nothing of the kind; 
it is distinctly static and sculpturesque, with a tone, style, and man- 
ner admirably adapted to depicting the colossal deities of an elder 
world, but to Keats at least hampering and cumbersome when it 
came to making them move. When he tried narrative, as in describ- 
ing Apollo's metamorphosis into a god, he was unsuccessful. A care- 
ful study of the poem leaves one with the feeling that Keats did not 
know just what to do with his characters or how to get them to doing 
anything, that he could create gods but could not make them act. 
He was himself too good a critic of his own work not to be conscious 
of this defect, and at the beginning of the third book turns from the 
Titans with the words : 

O leave them, Muse! O leave them to their woes; 
For thou art weak to sing such tumults dire: 
A solitary sorrow best befits 
Thy lips, and antheming a lonely grief. 

That is, he felt unequal to the epic action that the poem required, 
and after writing one hundred and thirty lines more gave up the task. 
But the fragment 3;vas too good to be lightly discarded, and a few 
months later he tried recasting it. This later version. The Fall of 
Hyperion, was, be it remembered, his last important work and was 
probably laid aside because of failing strength. The clouds that 
hung low over-<the last sixteen months of Keats 's life so dimmed his 
poetic powers and blurred his judgment that the second form of 
Hyperion is clearly inferior to the first. Furthermore, as the revision 
covers only a third of the original fragment, and as Keats said 
nothing of his plans concerning it, we have little idea what the 
later work was to have been. For these reasons a comparison of the 
two versions is sure to be perplexing and but partly satisfactory ; yet 
the second does show an attempt on Keats's part to free himself 
from the aloofness and impersonality which had previously ham- 
pered him. The most important difference between the two versions 
is that to the second is prefixed an entirely new beginning in which 
the poem becomes a vision or dream. This change from an epic to a 
vision is significant, for it indicates the difference in tone and manner 
between the two forms of the work. As the story may now be inter- 
rupted at any time, there is much more freedom in the manner of 

^ In the words of Mr. Bridges {Keats, 33-4), "The subject lacks the solid basis of 
outward event, by which epic maintains its interest: like Endymion, it is all imagina- 
tion ... a languor . . . lingers in the main design." 



2IO THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

telling it; and, as the events are shown to the poet by Moneta, the 
last of the Titans, they come to us colored by the impressions of 
the two, Moneta and the poet, each of whom comments on them. 
Consequently the poem is less formal, less objective and impersonal; 
it is, to use Keats's own expression, "humanized." ^ Even when the 
words of the first version remain, they gain a tenderness and pathos 
when spoken by the mourning Moneta of her fellow-Titans that 
they do not possess in their original form.^ Usually, however, 
there are omissions and slight changes which make the characters 
more human and moving, though less impressive. Compare, for in- 
stance, the following lines with the earlier form of them given on 
page 204 above: 



Along the margin sand large footmarks went 
No farther than to where old Saturn's feet 
Had rested, and there slept, how long a sleep! 
Degraded, cold, upon the sodden ground 
His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead.^ 



J 



Often the insertion of new passages of comment, interpretation, or 
description between the old ones tends to break the severity of the 
earlier fragment. For example, the fine Hne with which it opened, 

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale, 

though unchanged in the revised work, takes on an entirely different 

character : 

Side by side we stood 
(Like a stunt bramble by a solemn pine) 
Deep in the shady sadness of a vale 
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn.* 

It will also be seen how the tender beauty of a passage Hke the fol- 
lowing, introduced just before Saturn's first speech, softens the fallen 
Titan's lament: 

As the moist scent of flowers, and grass, and leaves 
Fills forest-dells with a pervading air, 
Known to the woodland nostril, so the words 
Of Saturn fill'd the mossy glooms around . . . 
With sad, low tones, while thus he spake, and sent 
Strange musings to the solitary Pan.* 

^ The Fall, il 2. 

^ To feel this, one has but to compare the opening lines of the second canto of The 
Fall with the corresponding passage in Hyperion (i. 158-68). 

^ The Fall, i. 319-23. A better illustration, but one too long to quote, will be found 
in the two descriptions of Thea: ib. i. 332-40; Hyperion, i. 26-37. 

* The Fall, i. 292-5; cf. also 319-40, 389-417, with Hyperion, i. 15-37, 83-112. 

' The Fall, i. 404-11. 



KEATS 211 

It might be expected that in the revision Keats not only would 
have "humanized" the poem in these various ways, but would have 
eliminated those Miltonisms of style and diction which had formerly 
troubled him. Strange to say, he did nothing of the kind.^ Before 
recasting it he evidently came to realize how much deeper than these 
matters of expression the real trouble lay, and seems to have become 
quite indifferent to them. He certainly retained a number of exter- 
nal Miltonisms in the new version, — "influence benign on planets 
pale," "Deity supreme," "of triumph calm," "voices of soft pro- 
claim," "for rest divine," "with strides colossal." - Likewise in the 
new lines that he wrote for The Fall he used freely such " Greek and 
Latin inversions and intonations" as "roof august," "with act 
adorant," "the faulture of decrepit things," and 

"That I am favour'd for unworthiness, 

By such propitious parley medicin'd 

In sickness not ignoble, I rejoice, 

Aye, and could weep for love of such award." 

So answer'd I, continuing.^ 

The use of adjectives for adverbs is more noticeable in The Fall 
than in the earlier version. Here, for example, are two instances 
within two lines : 

Soft. mitigated by divinest lids 

Half closed, and visionless entire they seem'd.* 

New Miltonic constructions, such as "me thoughtless," "Moneta 
silent," * are introduced, as well as no fewer than five borrowings 
from Milton.® It is true that some of the changes Keats made do 
leave the poem less Miltonic, but these can be explained on grounds 
not connected with Paradise Lost? It is also true that the most Mil- 

^ None of the critics or editors seem quite clear as to why Keats abandoned the 
original poem or just what his purpose was in revising it, but all agree with Mr. Bridges 
(Keats, 41) that "the effect of an imitation of Milton is fairly got rid of from the .Re- 
vision, and whole passages are excluded because they were too Miltonic, yet inversions 
and classicisms are used" (so, too, Hoops's edition of Hyperion, Berlin, 1899, pp. 
29-30, 37; De Selincourt, pp. 493, 516, 519-24; and L. Wolff's Keats, Paris, 1910, pp. 
400-407, 568 n. 2). The following pages contain my reasons for- thinking otherwise. 

2 rAeFa//,i. 414,416, 433, 435, ii. 36, 39 (Hyperion, i. 108,111, 128, 130, 192, 195). 

' i. 62, 283, 70, 182-6. 

* i. 266-7. See also i. 27, 76, 124, 146, 159.217, 245, 301, 393, 397, 447, "• 52- 

^ i. 368, 388. ^ See below. Appendix A. 

^ The only changes that might conceivably have been made in order to avoid the 
"excessive Miltonisms" of the first version are the following: 

a. The lines in Hyperion (i. 83-4) , 

One moon, with alteration slow, had shed 
Her silver seasons four upon the night, 



212 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

tonic passages in the first version are not found in the second ; but 
this is either because they had to be dropped to fit the change of plan, 
or, as is more often the case, because they were not reached in the 
second version, which covers only a third of the original fragment.^ 

become in the new version (i. 389-97), 

I bore 
The load of this eternal quietude . . . 
Ponderous upon my senses, a whole moon; 
For by my burning brain I measured sure 
Her silver seasons shedded on the night. . . . 

.... Oftentimes I pray'd 
Intense, that death would take me. 

Here, to be sure, Keats has eliminated two inversions; but is not this simply an inci- 
dental result of the presence of "I bore," of the change necessitated by making the 
poet a character in the poem? The lines could not have remained as they were; and 
the second form, with such diction as "eternal quietude . . . Ponderous upon my senses," 
and with "sure" and "intense" used as adverbs, is if anything more Miltonic than the 
first. 

b. In the line "The frozen God still couchant on the earth" {Hyperion i. 87), the 
expression "couchant on," which is misleading (since gray-haired Saturn "sat," not 
"lay "), is changed in The Fall to the more accurate term "bending to" (i. 386). 

c. The line "Upon the gold clouds metropolitan" {Hyperion, i. 129) Keats expanded 
into " From the gold peaks of heaven's high-piled clouds" {The Fall, i. 434) , possibly for 
the sake of clearness, or, as Mr. de Selincourt suggests (p. 524), because the latter ex- 
pression is "more natural and perhaps more highly poetical." If it was the inversion 
that troubled Keats, why did he leave "Of triumph calm" in the preceding line? 

d. In the revision, "For as among us mortals omens drear" {Hyperion, i. 169) be- 
comes "For as upon the earth dire prodigies" (ii. 18), obviously because in the second 
version Moneta is speaking and cannot use the words "us mortals." When these words 
had been altered the meter required further changes. 

e. For "oft made Hyperion ache" {Hyperion, i. 176) we have in The Fall the less 
Miltonic "make great Hyperion ache" (ii. 24), because in the revision the portents are 
represented as continuous occurrences. 

/. The expression "came slope upon the threshold of the west" {Hyperion, i. 204, 
where "slope" is probably derived from P. L., iv. 261, 591) is changed to "is sloping 
to" {The Fall, ii. 48), possibly because "slope" seemed too unusual to be entirely 
pleasant or clear. At any rate, on the preceding page the Miltonic verb "snuff" (in 
"still snufE'd the incense," Hyperion, i. 167, cf. P. L., x. 272), which is not open to the 
same objection, is kept. 

1 Two omissions need to be considered. The first is the "essentially Miltonic" 
passage, 

While sometimes eagle's wings. 
Unseen before by Gods or wondering men, 
Darken'd the place; and neighing steeds were heard. 
Not heard before by Gods or wondering men 

(i. 182-5). This recalls Paradise Lost to Mr. de Selincourt (p. 524) because of the repe- 
tition. Repetition is certainly common in Milton, but it is used so generally by poets 
that particular instances of it cannot safely be attributed to the influence of any one 
man. To me the lines are less Miltonic than those just before them, which are retained 
in the second version , 

And all its curtains of Aurorian clouds 

Flush'd angerly. 



KEATS 213 

Yet the "humanizing" of the poem was not the sole, perhaps not 
even the main, purpose of the revision. Keats may well have had 
several objects in view. He certainly wished to bring out the alle- 
gory or "meaning," and to express his ideas about the functions of 
a poet as he was not free to do in an epic. Perhaps it was the influ- 
ence of Dante that led him to change to a vision and to introduce a 
guide and interpreter (in the person of Moneta) who should perform 
a part similar to that of Virgil in the Divina Commedia} But it must 
be frankly acknowledged that, since we know very little as to what 
he intended to do with the poem either in the original or in the re- 
vised form, we can know still less about his reasons for changing it. 
The only thing clear is that the elimination of Miltonic phraseology 
formed no part of his plan, whereas the removal of what was to him 
the unnatural aloofness and austerity of the Miltonic epic he did 
attempt. 

Keats once wrote, with fine insight into the character and temper- 
ament of Milton : 

He had an exquisite passion for what is properly, in the sense of ease 
and pleasure, poetical Luxury; and with that it appears to me he would 
fain have been content, if he could, so doing, have preserved his self- 
respect and feel of duty performed; but there was working in him as it 
were that same sort of thing as operates in the great world to the end of a 
Prophecy's being accomplish'd: therefore he devoted himself rather to 
the ardours than the pleasures of Song.^ 

In view of Keats's own "exquisite passion for poetical luxury," he 
may have thought he resembled the youthful Milton, and may have 
hoped, when working on Hyperion, to become a poet not unKke the 
mature author of Paradise Lost. For unquestionably he had a good 

Keats may have discarded the passage because he was dissatisfied with eagles' wings 
and the neighing of horses; perhaps he felt that they were too earthy and not sufficiently 
dignified to serve as omens to the god of the sun. 

The other passage which is thought to have been omitted because of its Miltonic 
character is the description of the opening of Hyperion's palace-door at his approach 
(i. 205-12). The only words in these splendid lines that recall Paradise Lost are "ope" 
for "open" and "save what solemn tubes . . . gave of sweet And wandering sounds," 
which might easily have been changed had it been the Miltonisms that troubled Keats. 
The difficulty seems to have been that in the revision the poet could not himself describe 
the opening of the door for the Titan to enter, since he did not see it but had his first 
view of Hyperion after the god was within the palace. If, then, the passage were to be 
kept, it had to be put into Moneta's mouth; but, as her account is everywhere com- 
paratively direct, and as she is here concerned simply with impressing upon the poet 
Hyperion's distraught state of mind, she would never have taken eight lines to say — 
what might, indeed, be assumed — that the door opened for the god to enter. It may 
be that Keats planned to use the lines later in the poem. 

^ See Bridges, isTea/^, 40-41; Hoops, iiCea/^, 31-3. 

* "Notes on Paradise Lost" {Works, ed. Forman, iii. 19). 



214 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

deal in common with the author of Comus. Milton belonged in many- 
respects with the Elizabethans, the writers from whom Keats de- 
rived a large part of his inspiration; and both men were the poetical 
sons of Spenser. '' Keats probably borrowed more from Comus," says 
Mr. de Selincourt, "than from any other poem (or part of a poem) 
of the same length"; ^ and the last work he planned, the one he 
talked about on his voyage to Italy, was to have been on Sabrina,^ a 
subject admirably adapted to his powers, as it combined his love of 
mythology with his devotion to Milton and offered a fine scope for 
his imagination and his passion for sensuous beauty. 

In this projected work, in his letters, and in his poems modelled 
more or less upon Allegro and Penseroso we seem to have evidences, 
not of a waning admiration for Milton, but of a realization that if he 
was to follow him at all closely it must be in the minor poems and 
not in the epic. For on one side, and an important side, Keats 
was quite unlike the author of Paradise Lost. The natural lofti- 
ness of character, the strong moral purpose, the deep concern over 
political affairs, the devotion to hberty, the scholarly interests, these 
were quaUties quite alien to him who summed up all human knowl- 
edge in the words, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." Furthermore, 
Keats was very young, he lacked the nobility that comes from great 
sacrifice, the discipline of close study, the "years that bring the phil- 
osophic mind." He had the richness of Milton but not the intensity 
or the restraint.^ The reason why he could carry Isabella, the Eve of 
St. Agnes, and Lamia to triumphant conclusions but could not finish 
Hyperion was that the former were Ehzabethan or Renaissance in 
spirit and the latter classic. His venture on the epic heights was in 
the nature of a tour deforce: he could sustain it for a short time, but 
he could not breathe freely in the cold thin air, and soon turned back 
to the rich lowlands that he loved. Yet his apprenticeship to Milton 
made a different poet of him. He did not return to the "mawkish- 
ness" of Endymion and the earlier volume, but pushed forward to 
his masterpieces, the Eve of St. Agnes, Lamia, and the odes. These 
poems, which with Hyperion constitute Keats's greatest heritage to 
English literature, are the result of his study of Milton.^ 

^ Page 582, n. 2. 

2 Joseph Severn to C. Brown, Sept. 19, 1821, in Sharp's Life and Letters of Severn 
(1892), no. 

^ The fundamental difference between the two is illustrated by Milton's kinship 
with the prophets and poets of Palestine and the tragedians of Greece, whose utter- 
ances constituted his favorite reading and exerted the most powerful influence upon 
his mature work but had no effect upon Keats. 

* Pointed out by Bridges (Keats, 32-7, 48-9, 54, 94). 



CHAPTER XI 



THE INFLUENCE OUTSIDE OF BLANK VERSE 

OssiAN, Blake, Shelley, Byron 

There remain to be considered several writers who, notwithstanding 
their importance, require comparatively brief treatment because 
Milton's influence upon them is either slight or not capable of de- 
tailed proof. The first of these is the young Scotsman, James Mac- 
pherson, who long shrouded his unquestionable poetic gifts under 
the assumed character of a translator. In 1762 and 1763 he pub- 
lished Fingal and Tetnora, 'ancient epic poems, composed by 
Ossian and translated from the Galic by James Macpherson. ' The 
triumphant progress of these pieces through Scotland, England, and 
across the continent, the impression they made even upon such men 
as Goethe, and the long dispute regarding their authorship are 
matters too well known to need retelling here. Though nominally 
epics, it was not for their narrative qualities that they became fa- 
mous, but for their supposed antiquity, their vague, shadowy gran- 
deur, and their sonorous, rhythmic prose. 

In order, presumably, to give his work dignity and to gain for it 
consideration among the world's greatest poems, Macpherson called 
attention in the notes of Fingal to many passages in which Ossian 
resembled Homer, Virgil, and Milton. He seems, however, to have 
realized later that in so doing he was furnishing weapons to his 
opponents, for in Tetnora, published the following year, he did not 
mention similarities to other epics. 

But the harm had been done. In a "Dissertation on the Authen- 
ticity of Ossian's Poems" which Malcolm Laing printed as an ap- 
pendix to his History of Scotland (1800), one argument advanced for 
Macpherson's authorship of the pieces was their many borrowings 
from the Bible, Homer, Virgil, Pope, Milton, and others. Although 
most of the parallels were very far-fetched, their number was greatly 
increased in the edition of Ossian that Laing brought out in 1805. 
Of the one hundred and twenty-six mentioned in this work, not 
more than twenty-five seem to me worth calling attention to, and 
of these only the following should, in my opinion, be taken seriously: 

215 



2l6 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

"Their chief . . . tall as a glittering rock. His spear is a blasted pine. 
His shield the rising moon."^ — "The heroes . . . stood on the heath, like 
oaks, with all their branches round them; when . . . their withered leaves 
are rustling to the wind."* — "Like the darkened moon . . . when she 
moves, a dun circle, through heaven; and dreadful change is expected by 
men." ^ — "Thy voice shall remain in their ears." * — "Like the noise of 
a cave; when the sea of Togorma rolls before it: and its trees meet the 
roaring winds." ^ — "A thousand swords, at once unsheathed, gleam on 
the waving heath." ^ — "O thou that rollest above, round as the shield 
of my fathers! Whence are thy beams, O sun! thy everlasting light? 
Thou comest forth, in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves in the 
sky. . . . But thou thyself movest alone." ^ — "Where have ye been, ye 
southern winds! when the sons of my love were deceived? Bu have yet 
been sporting on plains. . . . O that ye had been rustling, in the sails of 
Nathos! ^ — "Long-streaming beam of light." ^ — "Rustling wing."^" — 
"His words are mixed with sighs."" — "Now would they have mixed in 
horrid fray, had not the wrath of Cathmor burned." ^^ — "Years roll on, 
seasons return, but he is still unknown." ^^ 

Borrowings much more numerous and striking than these have 
been noted in many writers of the time, and, in view of Milton's 
extraordinary vogue, it would be strange if the Ossianic epics did 
not take some phrases from Paradise Lost. Seven of those given 
above Macpherson himself mentioned, but he also pointed out a 

1 Fingal, i (Laing, i. 9, "tall as a rock of ice" in ist ed.); cf. P. L.,i. 283-92. 

2 Fingal, ii (Laing, i. 64); cf. P. L., i. 611-15. Cf. also Fingal, ii (Laing i. 76), 
"Stood Erin's . . . sons; like a grove through which the flame had rushed, hurried on by 
the winds of the stormy night; distant, withered, dark they stand"; Fingal, iv (Laing, 
i. 138-9), "Silent and tall he seemed as an oak on the banks of Lubar, which had its 
branches blasted of old by the lightning of heaven"; Calthon and Colmal (Laing, i. 
481), "He stood . . . with his host. They were like rocks broken with thunder, when 
their bent trees are singed and bare." 

* Fingal, ii (Laing, i. 75); cf. P. L.,i. 596-9. Cf. also War of Caros (Laing, i. 237), 
"dim, like the darkened moon behind the mist of night"; Carric-Thura (Laing, i. 4IS- 
I6), "like a light cloud on the sun, when he moves in his robes of mist, and shews but 
half his beams"; Temora, viii (Laing, ii. 254), "they are darkened moons in heaven"; 
Cath-Loda (Laing, ii. 316), "like Cruth-loda fiery-eyed, when he looks from behind the 
darkened moon, and strews his signs on night." 

* Comala (Laing, i. 227); cf. P. L., viii. 1-2. 

* War oj Caros (Laing, i. 235); cf. P. L., ii. 284-7. Cf. also Dar-Thula (Laing, i. 
386-7), "His voice was like hollow wind in a cave." 

^ Battle of Lora (Laing, i. 286); cf. P. L., i. 663-4. 

^ Carthon (Laing, i. 342-4); cf. P. L., iv. 32-5. 

^ Dar-Thula (Laing, i. 381-2); cf. Lycidas, 50-57. 

^ Oithona (Laing, i. 519); cf. Comus, 340. 
^" Croma (Laing, i. 539); cf. P. L., i. 768. 
" Temora, i (Laing, ii. 29); cf. P. L., i. 621. 
^2 lb. iv (Laing, ii. 126); cf. P. Z,.,iv. 990-96. 
" lb. (Laing, ii. 131-2); cf. P. L., iii. 40-41. 



OSSIAN — BLAKE 21 7 

number of other parallels in which there is so little similarity that he 
could hardly have had them in mind while making his " translation." 
Compare, for example, his " rustling winds roar in the distant wood " 
with Milton's 

As when hollow rocks retain 
The sound of blustering winds; ' 

or his "the gloom of battle poured along; as mist that is rolled on a 
valley," with the picture of the cherubim descending a hill in Eden, 

As evening mist 
Risen from a river o'er the marish gUdes, 
And gathers ground fast at the labourer's heel 
Homeward returning.^ 

Macpherson must have read Milton, — his notes alone show that, — 
and his imagination may well have been stimulated by the reading; 
yet he can hardly have been influenced in any vital way by a poem 
so remote from the vague, romantic rhapsodies or the short, simple 
declarative sentences he put into the mouth of Ossian. 

About the time the vogue of Fingal and Temora was nearing 
its height, their influence touched a young man whose work was 
destined to have none of the immediate, meteoric popularity of 
Macpherson's, but to gain steadily in favor long after the Scottish 
forgeries had ceased to be read. William Blake, who painted, en- 
graved, saw visions, consorted with revolutionists, piped songs of 
innocence, and thundered prophetic books, oft'ers many a trouble- 
some problem to the student over whom he casts his spell, for the 
majority of persons find his "definition of the most subHme poetry " 
— "allegory . . . altogether hidden from the corporeal understand- 
ing" 3 — only too applicable to all his longer works. One of the most 
interesting of the problems which the corporeal understanding finds 
baflfling in Blake is that of his debt to Paradise Lost. 

As to his knowledge of Milton's poetry and the importance of the 
part it played in his thoughts, there can be no question. Over ninety 
of his paintings and engravings deal with the work of the earlier poet, 
some forty-two with Paradise Lost, twelve with Paradise Regained, 

^ Fingal, i (Laing, i. 29); P. L., ii. 285-6. The previous line of each work contains 
the word " murmur," to which Macpherson does not call attention. In Ossian , however, 
the murmur "rolls along the hill" and is actually caused by the "rustling winds"; in 
Milton it fills Pandemonium and is like "the sound of blustering winds." 

* Fingal, ii (Laing, i. 69); P. L., xii. 629-32. In the first edition "poured" and 
"rolled" change places. 

' Letter to Thomas Butts, July 6, 1803. 



21 8 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

thirteen with Allegro and Penseroso, seventeen with Cotnus, seven 
with the Nativity; one is a portrait of the poet himself, and one was 
suggested by a line in the Death of a Fair Infant} His published 
writings, his letters, and the records of his conversations also contain 
numerous references to Milton, who came to him frequently in vis- 
ions and who furnished the title and principal character for one of 
his most important prophetic books. Three times in the course of 
his prose Public Address he refers enthusiastically to the author 
of Paradise Lost,^ and in his vigorous and astonishing Marriage of 
Heaven and Hell he gives his interpretation of the poem. Satan, he 
tells us, represents desire, and the Messiah reason or " the restrainer " 
— really the Evil One, for ''those who restrain desire, do so because 
theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason 
usurps its place and governs the unwilling." In a characteristic note 
there is the added information, ''The reason Milton wrote in fetters 
when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and 
Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without 
knowing it." 

In speaking of the things for which he was particularly grateful, 
Blake said, 

Flaxman hath given me Hayley his friend to be mine, such my lot upon Earth. 
Now my lot in the Heavens is this, Milton lov'd me in childhood and shew'd 
me his face.^ 

A little later he wrote Hayley, "In the meantime I have the happi- 
ness of seeing the Divine countenance in such men as Cowper and 
Milton more distinctly than in any prince or hero." ^ In Vala (or 

^ These figures are taken from W. M. Rossetti's "Descriptive Catalogue" (appended 
to the second volume of Gilchrist's Life of William Blake, new ed., 1880) and from the 
Grolier Club catalogue of Blake's works (1905). While not exact, they are probably 
not far wrong and err through understatement. Of some of the pictures, such as the 
frontispiece to Europe (suggested by Paradise Lost, vii. 224-31, as the British Museum 
copy indicates) , Blake made a number of replicas. 

'^ Gilchrist, ii. 168, 172. 

^ Letter to Flaxman, Sept. 12, 1800. Ezra, Isaiah, Shakespeare, Paracelsus, and 
Jacob Bohme are mentioned in the lines that follow. 

* Letter of May 28, 1804. He also referred to Milton in letters to Dr. Trusler, 
Aug. 16 and 23, 1799 (see p. 222 below), and to Thomas Butts, Nov. 22, 1802, first 
letter ("Perhaps picturesque is somewhat synonymous to the word taste, which we 
should think improperly applied to Homer or Milton, but very well to Prior or Pope"), 
April 25 and July 6, 1803. It will be remembered that, when Butts surprised Blake 
and his wife sitting unclad in their summer-house, they "had been reciting passages 
from Paradise Lost" (Gilchrist i. 112). In the "Descriptive Catalogue," no. v (Gil- 
christ, ii. 155), Blake writes (speaking of himself in the third person), "The stories of 
Arthur are the acts of Albion. ... In this Picture, believing with Milton the ancient 
British History, Mr. B. has," etc. According to M. Denis Saurat {Blake and Milton, 



BLAKE 219 

The Four Zoas) there is a sort of genealogy which "represents the 
whole history of the human race beginning with Los, the spirit of 
poetry, descending through various spiritual forms to Adam, the 
materialized 'natural man,' and ascending through Solomon, Charle- 
magne, Luther, and others to Milton, the last named and hence in- 
tended to be the greatest man who has yet appeared on earth." ^ 

Of the references that Crabb Robinson noted down from Blake's 
conversation, the most interesting is this: 

As he spoke of frequently seeing Milton, I ventured to ask . . . which 
of the . . . portraits ... is the most like. He answered, "They are all like, 
at different ages. I have seen him as a youth and as an old man with a 
long flowmg beard. He came lately as an old man — he said he came to 
ask a favour of me. He said he had committed an error in his Paradise 
Lost, which he wanted me to correct, in a poem or picture; but I declined. 
I said I had my own duties to perform. ... He wished me to expose the 
falsehood of his doctrine, taught in the Paradise Lost, that sexual inter- 
course arose out of the Fall." ^ 

Such an inexplicable misunderstanding of Paradise Lost shows how 
subjective, how indifferent to details, was Blake's manner of reading, 

Bordeaux, 1920, p. 36), he here "refers to Milton's History of Britain as his covering 
authority"; but is the reference not rather to Milton's plan for an epic on Arthur? In 
the Island in the Moon, chap, vii (pp. 73-4 of E. J. Ellis's Real Blake, 1907), Blake gives 
as the remark of the complacently imbecile Quid, "Homer is bombast, and Shake- 
speare is too wild, and Milton has no feelings." In his marginal notes to Reynolds's 
Discourses he refers four times to Milton (pp. 372, 376, 381, 392, of the Real Blake), 
quoting from the Reason of Church Government in one place, and writing in another, 
"The Neglect of such as Milton in a Country pretending to the Encouragement of Art 
is Sufficient Apology for my Vigorous Indignation." In the climax of Jerusalem (98: 9) 
"Bacon & Newton & Locke" (the three scientists) and "Milton & Shakspear & Chau- 
cer" (the three poets) appear in heaven along with "innumerable Chariots of the 
Aknighty." 

1 In the list of women's names that follows this genealogy, the last is "Mary," the 
greatest of women (see Vala, viii. 357-9). The quotation in the text is from a manu- 
script note furnished me by Mr. S. Foster Damon of Newton, Massachusetts, who has 
generously given me the advantage of his extensive study of Blake and allowed me to 
read a chapter in his forthcoming book. The Philosophy and Symbols of William Blake. 

^ Robinson's "Reminiscences," under the date "26/2/52", as quoted in Arthur 
Symons's William Blake (1907), 295-6. This is the fuller but later account and may 
contain recollections of other talks with Blake. Robinson's original notes on this con- 
versation (which are also given by Symons, pp. 263-4, Dec. 17, 1825) do not differ 
materially. Instead of "sexual intercourse," the original diary has "the pleasures of 
sex"; but either is inconsistent with Paradise Lost, iv. 741-70, viii. 510-20, 579-600. 
Blake probably had in mind the distinction (which he thought false) made in the epic 
between love and lust. The other references to Milton that Robinson noted are on 
pages 262, 265, 273, 274, 294, of Symons's book. Gilchrist (i. 362) cites as typical of 
Blake's "familiar conversations with Mr. Palmer and other disciples": " ' Milton the 
other day was saying to me' so and so. 'I tried to convince him he was wrong, but I 
could not succeed.' 'His tastes are Pagan; his house is Palladian, not Gothic' " 



220 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

a point that comes out still more clearly in his Imitation of Spenser, 
where no two stanzas use the same meter, none follow Spenser ex- 
actly, and where the number of lines in a stanza varies from eight to 
ten. Whatever his powerful imagination seized upon was likely to 
be so transformed as to be scarcely recognizable. He presumably 
read with his mind's eye, paying relatively little heed to words, 
phrasing, or style. "I do not behold the outward creation," he 
asserted, ". . .to me it is hindrance. ... I question not my corporeal 
eye any more than I would question a window concerning a sight. I 
look through it and not with it." ^ 

Such a man, even without the intense originality which is averse 
to borrowings of any kind, was not likely to take many words or 
expressions from the authors he read. Blake's frequent use of Bibli- 
cal language is a not unnatural exception, but he also adopted more 
phrases from Shakespeare and Milton than would be anticipated. 
Some of these may have slipped from his pen without thought of 
their source, but hardly these opening lines of Europe, which are in- 
debted to the stanza, the phrasing, and the subject-matter of the 
Nativity: 

The deep of winter came; 

What time the secret child 

Descended thro' the orient gates of the eternal day: 

War ceas'd, & all the troops like shadows fled to their abodes.^ 

Perhaps in writing "when early morn walks forth in sober grey," 
"human form divine," "when vocal May comes dancing from the 
East," "effluence Divine," "Eternity expands Its ever during 
doors," ^ Blake did not think of Milton; possibly he did not even in 
saying "a cavern shagged with horrid shades," and "englobing, in a 

^ Sequel to his description of the "Last Judgment" (Ellis's Real Blake, 327). Mr. 
Damon mentions as an example of his indifference to details his six spellings of the name 
of a soldier with whom he quarrelled, — Scofield, Schofield, Skofeld, Skofield, Scofeld, 
and Scholfield {Jerusalem, 5:27, 7:25, 8:41, 17:59, 43:51; and letter to Butts, Aug. i6, 
1803). 

* Cf. Nativity, 29-30, 48, 53-4, 232-3. Note also how many of the heathen deities 
mentioned in Milton, 37: 20-29, are found in lines 197-213 of the Nativity. For Blake's 
enthusiasm for the poem, see below, p. 228, n. i. 

' Song, "When early morn," i (cf. Lycidas, 187, P. R., iv. 426-7); Divine Image, 15, 
also Milton, extra page 32, line 13 (cf. P. L., iii. 44); Vala, ix. 193 (cf. May Morning, 
2-3) ; Milton, 31 :35 (cf . P. L., iii. 6) ; ib. 48-9 (cf . P. L., vii. 205-6). One of these paral- 
lels and several of those given later were called to my attention by Mr. Damon, who 
feels that the names of the twelve daughters of Albion, in Vala, ii. 61-2, and Jerusalem, 
5: 41-4, together with the way some of these names are spelled, indicate a familiarity 
with Milton's History of Britain. He likewise believes that the exaltation of the Bible 
at the expense of Greek and Latin writers in the preface to Milton, may have been sug- 
gested by Paradise Regained, iv. 331-42. 



BLAKE 221 

mighty globe self-balanced; " ^ but he must have had Paradise Lost in 
mind when he referred to Satan as "the father of Sin and Death," 
and when he wrote, 



and, 



I came forth from the head of Satan: back the Gnomes recoil'd 
And called me Sin, and for a sign portentous held me; 

In pits & dens & shades of death: in shapes of torment & woe. 
The plates & screws & wracks & saws & cords & fires & cisterns. 



^ Vala, iii. 124 (cf. Comus, 429), i. 123 (cf. P. L., vii. 239-42). 

^ Milton, 10:38-9 (cf. P. L., ii. 755-61); 24:33-4 (cf. P. L., ii. 621). Other pas- 
sages that may owe something to Milton are: "the pendulous earth" {Urizen, ix. 8, 
cf. P. L., iv. 1000); "collected in himself in awful pride {Vala, i. 322, cf. vi. 298, "col- 
lected, dark, the spectre stood," and P. L., ix. 673, iv. 986) ; "spirits of flaming fire on 
high governed the mighty song" {ib. i. 368, cf. P. L., vii. 30, to which Blake refers in 
a letter quoted on p. 222 below); "pangs smote me unknown before" {ib. iv. 93, cf. 
P. L., ii. 703); "threw his flight" {ib. vi. 2, 161, vii. 3, cf. P. L., iii. 741, of an angel in 
each case); "redounding smoke" {ib. vii. 9, cf. "cast forth red smoke and fire" eight 
lines farther on, also 601, and P. L., ii. 889); "chaos & ancient night" {Milton, 10:21, 
15:24-5, 18:33, cf. P. L., ii. 970, etc.); 

He formed golden compasses, 
And began to explore the Abyss 

{Urizen, vii. 8, cf. Vala, ii. 29, 142, and P. L., vii. 225-9); 

Ten thousand thousand were his hosts of spirits on the wind, 
Ten thousand thousand gUttering chariots shining in the sky 

{Vala, i. 328-9, cf. P. L., vi. 767-70); 

The Harrow cast thick flames, & orb'd us round in concave fire, 
A Hell of our own making 

{Milton, 10:22-3, cf. P. L., ii. 635, vi. 750-51); 

Loud Satan thunder'd . . . 

Coming in a Cloud with Trumpets and with Fiery Flame, 
An awful Form eastward from midst of a bright Paved-work 
Of precious stones, by Cherubim surrounded: so permitted 

.... to imitate 
The Eternal Great Humanity Divine {ib. 40:22-7, cf. P. L., ii. 508-15). 

The similarities in the following are more dubious: "the Prince of Light with splen- 
dour faded" {Vala, iii. 46, and Jerusalem, 29:35, cf. P. L., iv. 870-71); "the Prince of 
thunders . . . Fell down rushing, ruining" {Vala, iii. 141-3, cf. P. L., vi. 868); "warping 
upon the winds" {ib. iv. 186, cf. P. L., i. 341); "in serpents and in worms stretched out 
enormous length" {ib. vi. 114, cf. P. L., i. 209); "the Chariot Wheels filled with Eyes 
rage along" {Jerusalem, 63:11, cf. P. L., vi. 749-55); 

But infinitely beautiful the wondrous work arose 

In sorrow and care, a golden world whose porches round the heaven. 

And pillar'd halls and rooms received the eternal wandering stars. 

A wondrous golden building, man)' a window, many a door, 

And many a division let in and out the vast unknown. . . . 

. . . Thence arose soft clouds and exhalations 

{Vala, ii. 240-53, cf. P. L., i. 710-30). Another possible borrowing is given on p. 224 
below. The expressions "adamantine doors" {To Winter, i), "adamantine chains" 



222 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Even in the prose preface to Jerusalem Blake adopted the phrase- 
ology of the preface to Paradise Lost: 

When this Verse was first dictated to me I consider'd a Monotonous 
Cadence like that used by Milton & Shakspeare & all writers of English 
Blank Verse, derived from the modern bondage of Rhyming, to be a 
necessary and indispensable part of Verse. But I soon found that in the 
mouth of a true Orator such monotony was not only awkward, but as 
much a bondage as rhyme itself.' 

How naturally ideas and words of the earlier poet came to him is 
shown by his explaining in a letter that he was "of the same opinion 
with Milton when he says that the Muse visits his slumbers and 
awakes and governs his song when morn purples the east." ^ There 
is probably an unconscious reference to another passage from Para- 
dise Lost, of similar import, in his remark to Butts, "I have written 
this poem from immediate dictation, twelve or sometimes twenty or 
thirty lines at a time, without premeditation." ^ He seems to have 
taken Milton's allusions to the visits of the muse more seriously and 
to have interpreted them more Hterally than most persons do, for he 
wrote: ''The Ancients did not mean to Impose when they affirmed 
their belief in Vision and Revelation. Plato was in earnest. Milton 
was in earnest. They beheved that God did visit Man really and 
Truly." ^ It is also not unHkely that the phrase "the Daughters of 
Memory," which he uses several times when scornfully contrasting 

(Vala, ii. 66), "adamantine leaves" {ib. vi. 171), "the vast of Nature" {Song of Los, 
42), suggest Paradise Lost, i. 48, ii. 645-6, etc., vi. 203, as do the words "englobed," 
"englobing," "conglobing" {Urizen, ix. 9, Vala, i. 123, iii. 87, iv. 95, vi. 120, etc., 
of. P. L., vii. 239), and "petrific" {Vala, iv. 168, cf. P. L., x. 294). M. Paul Berger 
{William Blake, Mysticisme et Poesie, Paris, 1907, p. 329) regards Blind-man's Buff 
as "inspire par un passage de V Allegro de Milton," but only five lines (8-12) in Blake's 
octosyllabics have for me any suggestion of Milton's. Samson, which was originally 
published as prose, Mr. E. J. Ellis, following W. M. Rossetti, prints as blank verse and 
considers Blake's "most Miltonic fragment" {Poetical Works, 1906, i. 539-40). M. 
Berger (pp. 328-9) says of it, "Les expressions de Milton et celles de la Bible sont 
copiees presque mot a mot." I find but one such expression, • — the very dubious 
description of the angel, "His form was manhood in the prime" (cf. P. L.,xi. 245-6), — 
and, except possibly in the fourth and fifth sentences, no evidence of Milton's influence. 
The piece, in my opinion, was intended as poetry but not as blank verse. 

* Compare Milton's "rime being no necessary adjunct . . . of . . . good verse ... a 
fault avoided ... in ... all good oratory . . . the troublesome and modern bondage of 
riming." 

^ To Dr. Trusler, Aug. 16, 1799; cf. P. L., vii. 28-31. 

^ Letter of April 25, 1803; cf. P. L., ix. 20-24, "my celestial patroness . . . dictates 
to me . . . my unpremeditated ver^se." Milton likewise dictated "Ten, Twenty, or 
Thirty Verses at a Time" to his amanuenses (see Phillips's life, p. xxxvi, in Milton's 
Letters of State, 1694). 

* Note in Reynolds's Discourses (Ellis's Real Blake, 392). 



BLAKE 223 

the classical muses with "the Daughters of Inspiration," ^ was sug- 
gested by the noble words in the Reason of Church Government, where 
Milton refers to his epic as a work *'not to be obtained by the invo- 
cation of dame Memory and her siren daughters." We know that 
this passage impressed Blake, since he wrote it in a copy of Rey- 
nolds's Discourses} 

The style and diction of Paradise Lost he would seem no more 
likely to adopt than he was to borrow phrases. The "Monotonous 
Cadence " of blank verse he felt to be" as much a bondage as rhyme," 
and discarded it for a loose, half-prose measure of his own with long 
lines that fall into six, seven, or eight feet, usually seven. Yet, just 
as he did not escape borrowed expressions, he could not rid himself 
entirely from the qualities with which he had always been famiUar 
in unrimed poetry. He may not have tried; at any rate, he has many 
inversions that are marked and unnatural, as well as many adjec- 
tives used as adverbs which frequently sound more Miltonic from 
being taken out of their normal positions. Sometimes, as in Paradise 
Lost, a noun is placed between two of its qualifying adjectives, as 
"heavy clouds confused," "ornamented pillars square Of fire," 
"hard ironpetrific," "flakey locks terrific," "a mighty sound articu- 
late, " " in white linen pure he hovered , " " fluxile eyes englob 'd roll. ' ' ^ 
When there are several adjectives after the noun and but one or 
none before it, there is a Miltonic effect something like that of ap- 
position: "a crack across from immense to immense. Loud, strong"; 
"panting in sobs, Thick, short, incessant"; "dire flames. Quenchless, 
unceasing"; "a lovely form, inspired, divine, human"; 

He approached the East, 
Void, pathless, beaten with eternal sleet, and eternal hail and rain. 

Thirty of Tiriel's sons remained, to wither in the palace — 
Desolate, loathed, dumb, astonished.* 

The following passages will show that at times the prophetic books 
are clearly influenced by the style of Paradise Lost: 

I hear the screech of Childbirth loud pealing, & the groans 

Of Death, in Albion's clouds dreadful utter'd over all the Earth. 

^ For example, at the beginning of his account of his picture the "Last Judgment," 
and in Milton, preface, and 12:29. 

* See Ellis's ^ea/J3/a^e, 381. 

* Tiriel, v. 14; Vala, ii. 275-6, iv. 168, vi. 238, ix. 12; Jerusalem, 29:38 (also Vala, 
iii. 51), 29:68. 

* Fa/a, iii. 151-2, 157-8; vi. 263-4; vii. 465; vi. 144-5; TinW, v. 33-4. M. Berger, 
who calls attention to this Miltonism of Blake's (pp. 426-7), notes similar instances in 
Paradise Lost, i. 52-3, 60. Though not unusual in Vala, it is very rare in the other 
prophetic books. 



224 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

The Twelve Daughters of Albion attentive Usten in secret shades 
On Cambridge and Oxford beaming soft, uniting with Rahab's cloud, 
While Gwendolen spoke to Cambel, turning soft the spinning reel. 

Henceforth, Palamabron, let each his own station 
Keep: nor in pity false, nor in officious brotherhood, where 
None needs, be active. Mean time Palamabron's horses 
Rag'd with thick flames redundant, & the Harrow madden'd with fury. 

They Plow'd in tears! incessant pour'd Jehovah's rain & Molech's 
Thick fires, contending with the rain, thunder'd above rolling 
Terrible over their heads. 

Suddenly around Milton on my Path, the Starry Seven 

Burn'd terrible: my Path became a solid fire, as bright 

As the clear Sun & Milton silent came down on my Path. 

And there went forth from the Starry limbs of the Seven, Forms 

Human, with Trumpets innumerable, sounding articulate 

As the Seven spake.^ 

The lines given below not only illustrate the style of Vala but may 
show indebtedness to the subject-matter of Paradise Lost, particu- 
larly to that part of the fifth book in which Satan first plots rebellion 

with Beelzebub: 

His family 
Slept round on hills and valleys in the region of his love. 
But Urizen awoke, and Luvah awoke, and they conferred thus. 
Thou Luvah, said the Prince of Light, behold our sons and daughters 
Repose on beds. Let them sleep on, do thou alone depart 
Into thy wished kingdom, where in Majesty and Power 
We may create a throne. Deep in the North I place my lot, 
Thou in the South. Listen attentive. In silence of this night 
I will infold the universal tent in clouds opaque, while thou 
Seizest the chariots of the morning. Go; outfleeting ride 
Afar into the Zenith high. . . . 
Luvah replied: Dictate thou to thy equals, am not I 
The Prince of aU the hosts of men, nor equal know in Heaven? . . . 
But Urizen with darkness overspreading all the armies 
Sent round his heralds secretly, commanding to depart 
Into the North. . . . 

Sudden, down fell they all together into an unknown space. 
Deep, horrible, without end, from Beulah separate, far beneath.^ 

^ Jerusalem, 34:23-4, 82:10-12; Milton, 5:42-5, 6:27-9, 40:3-8. 

2 Vala, i. 457-514; of. P. L., v. 647-701, vi. 864-70. This similarity and one or two 
others that I have called attention to were pointed out by M. Saurat {Blake and Milton, 
15-23, 35). Perhaps M. Saurat is justified in asserting (p. 17), "The journeys of 
Urizen in the sixth Night of Vala, his explorations through the dark world of Urthona 
are strongly reminiscent of Satan's travels through outer Hell and Chaos." Urizen's 
journey, particularly the part described in Vala, vi. 72-176, is vaguely suggestive of 
Satan's, and his encounter with the "three terrific women" who are his daughters 
{Vala vi. 1-23) is somewhat like Satan's meeting with his offspring Sin and Death; 



BLAKE 225 

Blake's supreme tribute is the poem Milton, which not only con- 
tains a larger proportion of phrases from Paradise Lost than do the 
other books, makes as much use of its style, and prints its line. 
To Justify th&.Ways of God to Men, 

on the title-page, but introduces its author as a principal character. 
Yet, since the only connections between this title-character and the 
man John Milton are the references to his "sixty" (really sixty-six) 
years of life, to his death a ''hundred" (really one hundred thirty) 
years before this poem was begun, and to his three wives and three 
daughters, it seems as if Blake intended him to represent not so much 
the author of Paradise Lost as "the poet" in general. For, in the 
words of M. Berger, " Milton etait pour lui le Poete par excellence." ^ 
The work pictures Milton as "unhappy tho' in heav'n" because his 
"Sixfold Emanation" (his three wives and three daughters, his 
separation from whom represents his errors) is "scatter'd thro' the 
deep In torment." Through the song of a bard — an allegorical 
account of Blake's quarrel with Hayley which represents the sub- 
jection of genius to inferiority — he is roused to ' give up Selfhood ' 
and redeem this " Sixfold Emanation " by descending once more into 
the world and by entering into Blake. The remainder of the poem is 
taken up with the acts of the strange mythological beings who people 
the other prophetic books. 

Milton's entrance into Blake may mean simply the descent of 
poetic inspiration and the divine commission; it may also signify 
that the spirit of the elder writer prompted the younger to compose 
a poem intended to correct, among other things, the errors taught 
in Paradise Lost regarding sex;^ or it may mean that in general 
Milton's spirit had taken possession of his admirer. There are sev- 
eral reasons why Blake might have regarded himself as a kind of 
reincarnation or poetic son of the earlier writer. The emphasis in 
Paradise Lost upon the nudity of our first parents would have met 
with his hearty approval, for he seems to have had a decided prefer- 
ence for the undraped figure in life as well as in art; the frank treat- 
ment of Adam's relations with Eve must have pleased him still more, 
since the doctrine on which he insisted most often was that of com- 

but the similarities are so few and general that there is no certainty that the Milton 
passages were even unconsciously in Blake's mind when he wrote. 

^ Berger, p. 426. 

2 Blake, it will be remembered, told Crabb Robinson that Milton asked him to 
"correct, JM a poem or picture," an error he had made in Paradise Lost (see above, p. 219; 
the italics are mine). Allan Cunningham asserts {Lives of the most Eminent Painters, 
etc., 1830, ii. 157) that Milton "entrusted him with a whole poem of his, which the 
world had never seen," — that is, Milton. 



226 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

plete freedom in matters of sex; and the teachings of the epic as to 
the superiority of the male and the absolute authority to be exer- 
cised over the female were in entire accord with his own theory and 
practice./ Milton's vigorous, dynamic, positive personality was also 
very much to the taste of one who even on his death-bed sang so 
powerfully as to 'make the rafters ring,' who regarded negative 
virtues as vices, and scorned the mild insipidity of Hay ley, whose 
"mother on his father him begot." ^ Furthermore, the lofty nobihty 
that marks all of Milton's work would be neither overlooked nor 
unappreciated by one who was deeply religious in his own way, who 
worshipped the Bible, took a profoundly serious and spiritual view 
of life, and was intolerant of the mean, the low, and the trivial. The 
verse of Paradise Lost likewise appealed to Blake, for he tells us that 
he at first considered using something Uke it in Jerusalem. iMilton 
did not go far enough, to be sure; but he was the recognized leader of 
the free-verse movement, and Blake's meter was closer to his than 
to that of any other English poem. The extensive use of run-over 
Hnes in Paradise Lost, and the substitution of free musical para- 
graphs for lines as the basis of prosody, must also have pleased and 
probably have influenced the author of Jerusalem. Then, too, Mil- 
ton's feeling that his unpremeditated verse was dictated to him by 
a heavenly messenger coincided with Blake's conception of the 
origin of his own work and may have strengthened him in the idea^ 
Besides, Blake was a revolutionist, one who associated with radi- 
cals Uke Tom Paine, Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Priestley, 
and hailed the American and French repubUcs with enthusiasm. 
Although he disapproved of the political activities of the Latin 
secretary of the Commonwealth, his highly-strung nature must have 
vibrated in deep sympathy with Milton's passion for liberty of every 
kind. As he read his life and works, talked with his biographer Hay- 
ley, or considered his independence in religion, literature, poUtics, 
and divorce, he may well have thought that the spirit which did 
these things had indeed entered into him. Satan, the arch-rebel of 
all poetry, must have thrilled him with unusual joy. At least, he 
once declared him to be the true Saviour, and gave his name to an 

1 "Of H 's birth," Ellis's edition of Works, i. 170. In Vala, iii. 116-20, Urizen 

contrasts "feminine indolent bliss" and "passive idle sleep" with "active masculine 
virtue," and exclaims, 

Thy passivity, thy laws of obedience and insincerity 
Are my abhorrence. 
"The Weak Man may be Virtuous Enough, but will Never be an Artist," Blake wrote 
in Reynolds's Discourses (Ellis's Real Blake, 378) . 
' See p. 222 above. 



BLAKE 227 

important character (a very different one, to be sure) in the prophetic 
books and his spirit and some of his deeds to other characters. It 
may be that, like Burns during these very years, Blake held the 
apostate angel as his "favourite hero"; and perhaps, like Landor, 
another kindred spirit of the time, he sometimes 'recited aloud in 
solitary walks the haughty appeal of Satan and the deep penitence 
of Eve.' ' 

It was not alone Satan's rebellious spirit that attracted the rebel 
poet, but the power which the ruined archangel and his peers have 
over the imagination. Beelzebub, Moloch, Belial, Azazel, Abdiel, 
Michael, Raphael, and Uriel were beings after his own heart and 
must have influenced him not a little in the creation of the mytho- 
logical personages who throng his poetic universe. For Blake's 
imagination, like Milton's, was cosmic. The vastness, the shadowy 
grandeur, of the countless cherubim and seraphim, their tremendous 
battles that shook heaven to its base, the coming of the Messiah, his 
Blakesque chariot covered with eyes and 

Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel, undrawn, 
Itself instinct with spirit, 

the fall from heaven, the flames and sombre glories of hell, the won- 
drous temple that "rose like an exhalation," Satan's daring journey 
through the infernal world and across chaos, his encounters with his 
monstrous offspring Sin and Death, their immense bridge, the 
shadowy throne of Chaos and ancient Night, the golden compasses 
and the creation of our universe, — these pictures and many hke 
them stirred Blake profoundly. Some of them he actually copied 
(with important modifications of his own) , for they were the kind of 
work he wanted to do. He disliked limits of all kinds; he scorned 
things "smoothed up and niggled and poco-pen'd, and all the beau- 
ties paled out, blurred, and blotted"; he decried Pope and Dry den 
and exalted "Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, and Milton." ^ Such 
men fed his imagination, stimulated him, peopled his world of visions, 
helped him to be himself and to bring out what was in him ; and these 
were the things he sought in art. 

We have seen that from the one whom he regarded as "the poet 
par excellence'^ Blake borrowed what was for him a considerable 
number of phrases, lines, and incidents, some stylistic features of 
which he made no little use, as well as the name and perhaps a 
few of the deeds of Satan. This is all that can be proved, although 
it is highly probable that in his prosody and in the general freedom 

^ Seep. 294 below. * "Public Address," Gilchrist, ii. i68. 



228 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

of his verse he was influenced by the example of Paradise Lost and 
possibly by the choruses of Samson. Yet tangible, demonstrable 
matters like these are not sufficiently numerous or important to ex- 
press his debt, a debt which better knowledge of the prophetic 
books, the paintings, 'and the engravings serves only to magnify.^ 
All students of Blake feel this indebtedness, and most will probably 
agree that Milton's greatest service to his disciple was through en- 
couragement and stimulus in matters wherein the two were akin, 
and through the titanic figures, the tremendous deeds, the vast 
spaces and wondrous worlds, which he opened to the strange and 
preternaturally-active imagination of the artist-mystic and which 
appear transformed in Vala, Jerusalem, Milton, and the minor 
prophetic books.^-^ 

I dreamed that Milton's spirit rose, and took 

From life's green tree his Uranian lute; 
And from his touch sweet thunder flowed, and shook 
All human things built in contempt of man, — 
And sanguine thrones and impious altars quaked, 
Prisons and citadels. . . .^ 

This fragment of Shelley's — I have quoted all of it — is of little 
esthetic value, but it helps us to understand the poet's attitude 
towards Milton. For few things lay closer to Shelley's heart than 
the shaking down of "sanguine thrones," "impious altars," "prisons 
and citadels," and other " things built in contempt of man." It was 
far more important to him than it would be to most poets that Milton 
was not only the "Sire of an immortal strain," but one who, like 
Shelley himself, had suffered persecution from 

The priest, the slave, and the liberticide.^ 

"Let it ever be remembered," he reminds us, that "the sacred 
Milton" was "a republican, and a bold inquirer into morals and 
religion." ^ This republicanism, the passionate devotion Milton felt 

^ Blake's quarrel with Hayley and with the soldier Scofield stirred him profoundly 
and left no slight marks upon his work; but, were it not for our knowledge of the facts, 
we should be unable to trace the influence of either event. There is no such key to the 
impress Milton may have left; but a remark of Blake's about his picture, the "Riposo," 
shows how his mind may have worked. " It represents, " he explains, "the Holy Family 
in Egypt, guarded in their repose from those fiends the Egyptian gods. And though not 
directly taken from a poem of Milton's (for till I had designed it Milton's poem did not 
come into my thoughts) , yet it is very similar to his Hymn on the Nativity, which you 
wiU find among his smaller poems, and will read with great delight" (letter to Butts, 
July 6, 1803). Is it not likely that the poem was in the background of his consciousness 
while he was making the picture? 

^ Milton's Spirit. ^ Adonais, so, 32. * Tida.ce to Prometheus Unbound. 



SHELLEY 229 

for freedom in marriage, religion, and government, may have had 
ahnost as much weight as the greatness of his poetry in gaining for 
him the high praise. 

His clear Sprite 
Yet reigns o'er earth; the third among the sons of light.^ 

For the same reason, it was almost inevitable that Shelley should 
be drawn to Milton's hero, the rebellious Satan. In the preface to 
Prometheus Unbound he wrote, *^The only imaginary being resem- 
bling in any degree Prometheus, is Satan; and Prometheus is, in my 
judgement, a more poetical character than Satan, because, in addi- 
tion to courage, and majesty, and firm and patient opposition to 
omnipotent force, he is susceptible of being described as exempt 
from the taints of ambition, envy, revenge, and a desire for personal 
aggrandisement." May not Shelley have come to think later that 
Satan also was "susceptible of being described" as a disinterested 
rebel against tyranny? At least the character attracted him, for he 
left two short fragments (which have been named Satan Broken 
Loose and Pater Omnipotens) that deal with it. The first of these is 
in rime, the second is so admirably Miltonic in both diction and 
style that it should be quoted entire : 

Serene in his unconquerable might 
Endued, the Almighty King, his steadfast throne 
Encompassed unapproachably with power 
And darkness and deep solitude and awe 
Stood like a black cloud on some aery cliff 
Embosoming its lightning — in his sight 
Unnumbered glorious spirits trembling stood 
Like slaves before their Lord — prostrate around 
Heaven's multitudes hymned everlasting praise. 

Shelley's only completed poem that shows appreciable influence 
from Paradise Lost is his earHer work, that pageant of wild natural 
scenery, Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude (18 16). The slender thread 
of story that connects the descriptions tells of the wanderings of a 
young poet through vast forests and ruined cities of old, over the 
sea, and down a subterranean river until he finds a quiet death. In 
this there is nothing epic or grandiose, nothing to call for the sono- 
rous dignity, the lofty aloofness, of Milton's style. And most of the 
poem is not Miltonic; it has too much of Shelley's vague allegory 
and dreamy loveliness, too little restraint and condensation, to be 
that. Yet when we read such phrases as "sudden she rose," "calm, 

^ Adonais, $5-6. 



230 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

he still pursued," "vast Aornos seen from Petra's steep," or Unes 
Uke 

And mighty Earth 

From sea and mountain, city and wilderness, 

In vesper low or joyous orison, 

Lifts still its solemn voice,* 

we are certainly reminded of Paradise Lost. In other passages the 
similarity is even more marked : 

The fountains of divine philosophy 
Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of great, 
Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past 
In truth or fable consecrates, he felt 
And knew. 

The Poet wandering on, through Arabic 
And Persia, and the wUd Carmanian waste, 
And o'er the aerial mountains which pour down 
Indus and Oxus from their icy caves 
In joy and exultation held his way." 

But the larger utterance, the restraint and grandeur, of Milton are 
best caught in these lines : 

His wandering step 

Obedient to high thoughts, has visited 

The awful ruins of the days of old: 

Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste 

Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers 

Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, 

Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange 

Sculptured on alabaster obelisk, 

Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphynx, 

Dark Ethiopia in her desert hills 

Conceals.' 

* lines 172, 539, 240, 692-5. " 006371-5,140-44. 

' Lines 106-16. Shelley seems to have borrowed from Milton's "chariot of Paternal 
Deity" (P. L., vi. 750-66) the passage. 

The restless wheels of being on their way, 
Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life. 
Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal 

{Queen Mob, ix. 152-4, repeated in the Daemon of the World, ii. 536-8). His "wings of 
skiey grain" {Prometheus, i. 760) recall Raphael's "feather'd mail. Sky-tinctured 
grain" (P. Z,., v. 284-5) ; his "quips and cranks" {Witch of Atlas, 453) is certainly from 
Allegro, 27; and his "mighty legions . . . each troop emblazoning its merits On meteor 
flags" {Witch, 460-62) seems to have been suggested by " the imperial ensign, which . . . 
Shone like a meteor . . . With . . . golden lustre rich emblazed. Seraphic . . . trophies" 
(P. L., i. 536-9). "Though fallen — and fallen on evil times" and " low-though ted 
care" {Letter to Maria Gisborne, 198, 294) must have been suggested by Milton (P. L., 
vii. 25-6, Comus, 6), particularly since the last line of the poem in which they occur is 
the last line of Lycidas. It is likely also that the "vultures frighted from Imaus" 




BYRON 231 

It may be that the superb versification of Alastor, which prob- 
ably owes not a little to Wordsworth, was also affected by Paradise 
Lost. We cannot be sure. Yet the total influence of Milton, even 
when we include his octosyllabics and sonnets, was not profound. 
Shelley took from all sources, but he assimilated so thoroughly that 
what he produced was almost always distinctly his own. Yet if he 
had gone on with Satan's second revolt, using the verse, style, and 
diction of Pater Omnipotens, he might have left us the great Miltonic 
monument of the nineteenth century. 

The attraction Satan exerted upon Shelley he likewise exercised 
for the same reasons, and at about the same time, on Byron. The 
Lucifer that Byron introduced into his blank-verse drama, Cain, a 
Mystery (182 1), is not, however, the Satan of Paradise Lost. Byron's 
fallen angel is more complex, more modern, far less admirable and 
impressive. He is the spirit of negation and doubt; he does not fight, 
he sneers. There is little of the archangel ruined about him, no ex- 
cess of glory obscured, no 

dauntless courage, and considerate pride 
Waiting revenge. 

He has, however, the dignity, the pride, the love of freedom, the 
scorn of homage to the Almighty, which distinguish Milton's Satan. ^ 
The resemblance is strongest in this first description of him : 

If I shrink not from these, the fire-armed angels, 
Why should I quail from him who now approaches? 
Yet — he seems mightier far than them, nor less 
Beauteous, and yet not all as beautiful 
As he hath been, and might be: sorrow seems 
Half of his immortality.* 

It will be remembered that Byron's poetical commandments 
began, 

Thou shalt believe in MUton, Dryden, Pope,' 

(Hellas, 50) sprang from the famous one in Paradise Lost (iii. 431-9). The passage 
in Prometheus, iv. 135-7, Our spoil is won, 

Our task is done, 
We are free to dive, or soar, or run, 
recalls Comus, 1012-13, and in each case the lines that follow contain similar ideas. 
One of the choruses in Hellas (197-238) seems to employ part of the stanza of the 
Nativity (see p. 567 below), and the address To Harriet prefixed to Queen Mab is in the 
measure of the translation from Horace. For Shelley's use of the meter and plan of 
Allegro, see pp. 474-5 below. 

1 Cf. Cain, I. i. 237-9, 305-8, 383-90, 552-4, H. i. 5-12, ii. 425-46, with P. L., i. 
94-124, 589-606, iv. 970-90. 

* I. i. 91-6. ' Don Juan, I. ccv. 



232 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

and that he wrote in the preface to Cain, "Since I was twenty I 
have never read Milton; but I had read him so frequently before, 
that this may make Uttle difference." The most important effect of 
these repeated readings lies in the entire conception of the super- 
natural parts of Cain, — the character of Lucifer, the picture of hell, 
and the vague grandeur and immensity of the unknown worlds 
which are shown to the rebellious mortal. Something of this will be 
felt in the following passage, in which as usual the similarity to 
Paradise Lost is heightened by the Miltonic diction and lessened by 
the loose- jointed flabbiness of Byron's blank verse: 

How silent and how vast are these dim worlds! 

For they seem more than one, and yet more peopled 

Than the huge brilliant luminous orbs which swung 

So thickly in the upper air, that I 

Had deem'd them rather the bright populace 

Of some all unimaginable Heaven, 

Than things to be inhabited themselves, 

But that on drawing near them I beheld 

Their swelling into palpable immensity. ^ 

The appeal which Milton's Satan had for Burns, Blake, Shelley, 
and Byron has not been felt in the same force by the less romantic 
and revolutionary poets of later times. To be sure, the once- 
popular Festus (1839), which Philip James Bailey began as an imita- 
tion of Goethe but made increasingly Miltonic in style and diction 
through extensive additions, has a Lucifer who recalls the hero of 

^ Cain, II. ii. 1-9. The following passages from Cain recall lines in Paradise Lost: 

If he has made, 
As he saith — which I know not, nor believe — 
But, if he made us — he cannot unmake 

(I. i. 140-42; cf. P. L., ix. 718-20, and v. 850-66); 

But let him [God] 
Sit on his vast and solitary throne — 
Creating worlds, to make eternity 
Less burthensome to his immense existence 
And unparticipated solitude; 
Let him crowd orb on orb : he is alone 

(I. i. 147-52; cf. 471-7, and P. L., viii. 364-5, 404-7); 

All the stars of heaven, 
The deep blue moon of night, lit by an orb 
Which looks a spirit, or a spirit's world — 
The hues of twilight — the Sun's gorgeous coming — 
His setting indescribable . . . 

The forest shade, the green bough, the bird's voice . . . 
All these are nothing, to my eyes and heart, 
Like Adah's face (II. ii. 255-68; cf. P. L., iv. 641-56). 

Manfred also was probably somewhat influenced by Paradise Lost. Note especially 
II. ii. 185-8, III. iv. 336-8, 389-92 (cf. P. L., i. 600-603, 252-5). 



BAILEY — PHILLIPS 23 3 

Paradise Lost in certain scenes near the end.^ Indirectly Milton may 
also be somewhat responsible for the conception of Satan in Mere- 
dith's splendid sonnet Lucifer in Starlight (1883), George Santa- 
yana's nobly-conceived and finely-executed " theological tragedy " 
Lucifer (1899), and similar works. Decidedly inferior to these poems 
but interesting because of its date, 191 5, and its frank plagiarism is 
the Armageddon of Stephen Phillips. The prolog and epilog of this 
''modern epic drama" are laid in hell, and the first rising of the 
curtain discloses a kind of pandemonic council with Satan on "a 
shadowy throne," whence he rules with despotic sway. In the ad- 
dresses of Beelzebub, Moloch, and Belial that follow, each fallen 
angel preserves the character given him in Paradise Lost, and the 
lines Belial speaks even have the old deferential oily style. As in 
Milton, the sentiments of this sensuous, ease-loving spirit are de- 
livered immediately after Moloch's eulogy on war, to which they 
are somewhat opposed. He begins thus : 

O Lords, I scarcely know, if now I rise 
In order, to address this full conclave, 
I, Lord of Lies; nor would I seem to slight 
The ancient, grand prerogative of Force. 

If the style of the poem owes anything to Paradise Lost, it is in these 
lines : 

Spirit, to me alone inferior. 

Inaction is the bread of mutiny. 

But the main field and region of grand war 
Disputed lies, an indecisive plain. 

Splendid is Force, but solitary, falls 
And self -defeated, unrelieved by lies. 

' Note particularly section L of the fiftieth-anniversary edition, and compare A. D. 
McKillop's thesis (Harvard, 1920), The Spasmodic School in Victorian Poetry. Bailey's 
Angel World, The Mystic, and Spiritual Legend are, in diction and in the extensive use 
of strange proper nouns, astonishingly Miltonic for poems published so late as 1850 
and 1855. 



THE INFLUENCE OF PARADISE LOST AS SHOWN 

IN THE MORE IMPORTANT TYPES OF 

BLANK-VERSE POETRY 

The influence of Paradise Lost upon its early admirers and upon the 
principal later writers who were affected by it has now been studied 
in considerable detail. In order that the reader might understand 
the method of determining this influence and be able to test for him- 
self the validity of the conclusions reached, numerous passages have 
been quoted and long lists of words, phrases, references, and borrow- 
ings have been introduced. Dull as much of this matter is, its im- 
portance in the present connection, together with the significance 
of the authors studied, has, it is to be hoped, given a certain interest 
to many a tedious page. To continue this process, however, through 
John Duncan's dreary Essay on Happiness, W. H. Drummond's dull 
Pleasures of Benevolence, or the anonymous stupid Wisdom, through 
the twenty-five books of Cottle's absurd Cambria or the thirty of 
Glover's unreadable Athenaid, were to plant brambles in the thorny 
path of learning. The limits both of patience and of space require 
that only the more important of these minor works be considered at 
all, and they but briefly; for, even after the hundreds of still-born or 
forgotten short pieces have been passed over, there remains a mass 
of blank verse that looms before us like a huge purgatorial mountain. 
Few of the works that enter into this pile can be made to take on 
any of the fascination of romance if they are to keep much of their 
own character; yet, by arranging the poems according to types and 
following the development of each type, we may learn not a little 
literary history and gain some much-needed insight into what our 
forefathers thought and liked. In the following chapters, accord- 
ingly, the longer of the remaining poems that show the influence 
of Paradise Lost will be studied along with other pieces that belong 
to the same class. 

Obviously, no sharp line can be drawn between philosophical, reli- 
gious, technical, reflective, and descriptive poems. Intellectual 
speculation, religious emotion, comment on human life, and descrip- 
tion of natural scenery abound in all literature and sometimes form 
the most significant parts of works into which they are introduced 
incidentally; yet if we ask ourselves whether a work is primarily 
concerned with religious teaching, technical instruction, or philo- 



TYPES OF BLANK-VERSE POETRY 235 

sophical speculation, we can usually determine under what class it 
falls. To continue this separating process, however, so as to collect 
all the philosophical, didactic, technical, or descriptive passages of 
any length to be found in the poetry of the time, would be an inter- 
minable task that would defeat its own end. This has not been 
attempted, but it is hoped that no important poem or part of a 
poem has been overlooked. 



CHAPTER XII 

MEDITATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE POETRY 

On the whole, the most interesting of all the forgotten verse of this 
neglected century, the most readable and from the standpoint of 
literary development the most significant, is to be found among 
descriptive poems. These include, it should be observed, the greatest 
unrimed pieces of the period, The Seasons, The Task, and The Prelude; 
and in them may be traced the course of two of the more notable 
movements in modern life and literature, — the development of the 
love of nature and of the power to express that love in poetry. These 
two things we commonly think of as synonymous, and thus do seri- 
ous injustice to our earlier writers. Yet we know that even to-day, 
when nature- worship has become a fad, there are many mute, in- 
glorious Wordsworths, as well as writers who give very inadequate 
expression to their love of the out-of-doors. How much more diffi- 
cult must the writing of descriptive verse have been at a time when 
the leading poets of the day could find no better words for the miracle 
of spring than "Blushing Flora paints th' enamelled ground"! '^ 

There is no warrant for thinking that, because an author employs 
conventional phraseology and a turgid style, he does not feel the 
beauties of which he writes. Who would guess from the poems alone 
the intense love of nature which lay behind Wordsworth's Descrip- 
tive Sketches and the odes of Gray? Yet much had been done before 
these men wrote. Wordsworth, like Burns, was the culmination of 
a long line of development, of unconscious divergence from accepted 
forms, of experimentation, failure, and partial success. What would 
either of them have done had he been born a century earlier? What 
might The Seasons have been had it come at the end instead of the 
beginning of its century? The world will never be sufficiently grate- 
ful for the forgotten men who drained bogs, felled trees, removed 
stumps and boulders, ploughed, harrowed, and fertilized the soil, to 
add new fields to the pleasant land of poesie, — fields which Words- 
worth, Shelley, and Tennyson found ready for their use. If we keep 
in mind the great cause which these unknown men were helping to 
advance, if we look for it behind what they said to what they prob- 

1 Pope, Windsor Forest, 38; Thomson, Lines on Marlefield, 20. 
336 



DESCRIPTIVE POETRY: THOMSON 237 

ably felt, and if we are on the watch for the growth of the faculty of 
close observation and of true and fluent expression, we shall find not 
a little to interest us in their productions, faulty and dull as they are. 

Thomson's Seasons is almost the first long descriptive poem in 
English. There had, to be sure, been many pastorals and a few 
pieces like Coopers Hill and Windsor Forest; but in them nature, 
instead of being the center of interest, was little more than a pleasant 
background or setting for man and his works. Furthermore, they did 
not attempt to picture the real country, but dealt with artificial na- 
ture in a conventionalized way.^ Thomson, on the contrary, showed 
a real enthusiasm for the out-of-doors and for country life, and 
described them with more reality and at much greater length than 
had any previous poet. Since, then, The Seasons was practically the 
first and for a time the only important descriptive poem, and since 
it remained throughout the century not merely the greatest work of 
its kind but the most popular of any kind, it naturally became the 
most potent influence in this style of writing. The best evidence of 
such influence is that Thomson made blank verse the accepted vehicle 
for nature poetry, and even fastened upon that poetry his own turgid 
diction and contorted style. This was a particularly unfortunate 
legacy, for, to be effective, nature poetry must be natural. In epic 
and didactic works a certain amount of bombast is tolerable, and 
even in descriptions of floods, storms, and other unusual phenomena 
a heightened style is not unsuitable ; but a view from a hill-top or a 
twilight walk along a river loses its charm when described in the 
manner of Dr. Johnson. 

As a matter of fact, turgidity of style and diction forms the prin- 
cipal defect of the nature poetry of the century, and on this account 
particular attention will be paid to its gradual elimination. The 
process was for several reasons more gradual than might be ex- 
pected. In the first place, the time was anything but revolutionary; 
poets were conservative and usually conventional, they did what 
others had done and the public was pleased. Then, too, pomposity 
and stylistic contortions gave a kind of poetic covering to what was 
really prose. But even a poetic conception would hardly have seemed 
poetic if expressed with the simplicity of Tintern Abbey. For any such 
plainness the poets and the public were alike unready. The develop- 
ment was, to be sure, towards a more natural and more conversa- 

^ This is probably the reason why the heroic couplet was little used by the best 
descriptive poets of the eighteenth century. It had been developed only along the 
line of terseness and brilliance, and in this field connoted work such as Pope did. To 
picture the country truly and movingly in couplets, either the ability or the courage 
was lacking. 



238 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

tional style, that is, towards prose; yet the timid versifiers of the 
time were so anxious not to be prosaic that they adopted what they 
regarded as poetic manner. Besides, love of the country was by no 
means so common in the days of Pope and Johnson as it is to-day, 
and men often wrote about nature without much enthusiasm or 
much knowledge of the subject. Under these conditions conven- 
tionality flourished and the contorted and grandiose expressions 
sanctioned by The Seasons, and in a way by Paradise Lost, yielded 
very slowly before the advances of simplicity. 

The influence of Thomson made itself felt almost immediately. 
Within a few months of the publication of his Winter (1726), David 
Mallet — or Malloch, as his name had been in Scotland — com- 
posed an unrimed piece of a thousand lines which he called The 
Excursion, a misleading title, for Mallet meant by it ''a short ex- 
cursive survey of the Earth and Heavens," including descriptions of 
storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and the like.^ The poem 
was undoubtedly suggested by Thomson's work, which had been 
written while the two young Scots were rooming together. It is 
destitute of inspiration and is weighed down by exaggerated Milton- 
isms of style and language. For these, however, Mallet did not have 
to go to Thomson, since he had already employed them five years 
before in a short piece which confessedly imitated "the greatest of 
all the English poets." ^ Furthermore, many of the phrases in The 
Excursion testify to a considerable familiarity with Milton.^ 

Some years later, in 1747, Mallet published a second unrimed 
poem, Amyntor and Theodora, or the Hermit, a variation of the old 
story of the hermit who saves the life of a young man only to find 
that the youth is the son of his greatest enemy and the beloved of his 
own lost daughter. Later the daughter is recovered and all ends 
happily. The best passages, like this one (which gives far too favor- 

1 See the summary prefixed to the poem in the "corrected" edition of his works 
(1759), i. 66. About the same time another of Thomson's fellow-countrymen, Dr. 
John Armstrong, was busying himself with a winter-piece in imitation of Shakespeare, 
which, however, was not printed until 1770 (in his Miscellanies, i. 147-58). It con- 
tains realistic pictures of the season, but has slight value as poetry. 

2 See Mallet's letter to John Ker, Dec. 21, 1721 {Europ. Mag., 1793, xxiii. 413), 
which also settles the date of the poem. For the piece itself, The Transfiguration, see 
ib.xxv. 52. 

3 For example, "hoar Hill" (ist ed., 1728, p. 13, cf. Allegro, 55), "quick-glancing" 
(p. 17, cf. P. L., vii. 405), "void profound" (p. 35, cf. P. L., ii. 438), "prime Orb" 
(p. 60, cf. P. L.,iv. 592, of the sun in each case), " Star amid the Train of Night" (p. 64, 
cf. P. L., V. 166). The later edition, which is considerably enlarged, contains "the 
clouds assume Their gayest liveries" {Works, 1759, i. 70, cf. Allegro, 62), "by winds 
sublim'd" {ib. 85, cf. P. L., i. 235, of a volcano in each case), etc. 



DESCRIPTIVE POETRY: MALLET — SOMERVILE 239 

able an impression of the poem as a whole), are those that describe 
the wild scenery of the Hebrides, where the story is laid : 

From this steep, 
Diflfus'd immense in rowling prospect lay 
The northern deep. Amidst, from space to space. 
Her numerous isles, rich gems of Albion's crown, 
As slow th' ascending mists disperse in air, 
Shoot gradual from her bosom: and beyond, 
Like distant clouds blue-floating on the verge 
Of evening skies, break forth the dawning hills. 
A thousand landschapes! barren some and bare, 
Rock pil'd on rock amazing up to heaven, 
Of horrid grandeur: some with sounding ash, 
Or oak broad-shadowing, or the spiry growth 
Of waving pine high-plum'd, and all beheld 
More lovely in the sun's adorning beam; 
Who now, fair-rising o'er yon eastern cliff 
The vernal verdure tinctures gay with gold.' 

Thomson's influence also made itself felt in the four books of 
James Ralph's Night (1728), each of which is a nocturnal picture, in 
conventional style and language, of the more obvious features of 
one of the seasons. Ralph inclines to couplet prosody and to a 
style but slightly Miltonic. He had been somewhat closer to Para- 
dise Lost the year before in his Tempest, or the Terrors of Death, an 
uninspired moralized description of a storm at sea.^ 

Formal description of nature plays practically no part in Somer- 
vile's Chace (1735), but many incidental touches reveal the keen eye 
and the hearty love for the out-of-doors which might be expected of 
a country gentleman devoted to hunting. We are shown the hares, 
for instance, ' ' 'mong Beds of Rushes hid," sitting "wary, and close " 
near the "matted Blade," listening "intent . . . with one Ear erect"; 
or we watch them as 

In the long Grass they skulk, or shrinking creep 
Among the wither'd Leaves. 

We follow the hounds as they range "in the rough bristly Stubbles," 
or in the copse, 

Thick with entangling Grass, or prickly Furze; 

^ ii. 76-91; see also iii. 359-69. The references are to the revised version of the 
poem as published in his Works, i. 141-2, 173. 

^ In the preface to Night he discusses Paradise Lost and its verse at some length, and 
on the title-page of The Tempest quotes four lines from it. For his epic Zeuma, see 
p. 280 below. 



240 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

and, "where ancient Alders shade The deep still Pool," we see them 
sweep the " Morning Dews " 

that from their Feet besprinkling drop 
Dispers'd, and leave a Track oblique behind.' 

That the inability to write simple, fluent blank verse makes 
eighteenth-century poetry a very inadequate representation of the 
feelings of its authors is illustrated in the work of John Dyer. Dyer 
was a true poet, not great or particularly virile, but a man of fine 
sensitiveness to the beauties of the externalworld, and of considerable 
skill in verse. The following lines record the impression that the 
Roman ruins made in 1740 upon an earher Childe Harold: 

Fall'n, fall'n, a silent Heap; her Heroes all 

Sunk in their Urns; behold the Pride of Pomp, 

The Throne of Nations fall'n; obscur'd in dust; 

Ev'n yet Majestical: The solemn Scene 

Elates the soul, while now the rising Sun 

Flames on the Ruins, in the purer air 

Tow'ring aloft, upon the glitt'ring plain. 

Like broken Rocks, a vast circumference; 

Rent Palaces, crush'd Columns, rifted Moles, 

Fanes roU'd on Fanes, and Tombs on buried Tombs.'' 

These lines are from a forgotten poem. Their author's Grongar Hill 
has preserved him a place in the anthologies, and his Fleece is known, 
at least by name, to many. Why, then, has this unwarranted neglect 
fallen upon The Ruins of Rome? The explanation is in part to be 
found in lines like these: 

Swift is the Flight of Wealth; unnumber'd Wants, 
Brood of voluptousness, cry out aloud 
Necessity, and seek the splendid Bribe; 
The citron Board; the Bowl emboss'd with Gems, 
And tender Foliage, wildly wreath'd around. 
Of seeming Ivy, by that artful Hand, 
Corinthian Therides; whate'er is known 
Of rarest acquisition; Tyrian Garbs, 
Neptunian Albion's high testaceous Food.^ 

"How could the author of the previous passage have written this 
one?" we exclaim. But how could he, living when he did and not 
being a great poet, have done otherwise? He admired the blank 

' The Chace, ii. 32, 30, 213, 41-2, 58; iii. 41-2; iv. 380-81, 416-18. On Somervile, 
see pp. 361-3 below. 

2 Ruins oj Rome (1740), p. 2. 

^ lb. 26. The lines that immediately follow the first passage quoted are almost as 
bad as these. 



DESCRIPTIVE POETRY: DYER — KEATE 241 

verse of Paradise Lost and tried to imitate it, and the only other un- 
rimed poems that he knew, Cyder and The Seasons, had the same 
defects as his own. Although his taste was in the main excellent, he, 
like most of his contemporaries, undoubtedly enjoyed an inflated 
style and a turgid diction and found little to object to in the lines 
just quoted. 

Dyer possessed a genuine though slender vein of poetry, and 
might, had he been born fifty years later, have produced something 
of ' power to live and serve the future hour ' ; but he had fallen on evil 
days for a writer of blank verse. Like other descriptive poets, he is 
best when he is least Miltonic, — but he is usually Miltonic. Practi- 
cally every characteristic that distinguishes Paradise Lost is annoy- 
ingly in evidence in his verse, — inversion, apposition, the use of an 
adjective for an adverb or a substantive or of words in their original 
but obsolete senses, and a fondness for series of proper names or for 
adjectives made from such names by the addition of -ean} 

Another cultivated Englishman who sought to record in blank 
verse the impressions made upon him by travels on the continent 
was George Keate. The title of Keate's first unrimed poem. Ancient 
and Modern Rome (written in 1755), recalls that of the first part of 
Thomson's Liberty, *' Ancient and Modern Italy compared," but in 
contents it is much nearer to the Ruins of Rome. Like Dyer's work, 
it is a descriptive poem interspersed with reflections, but here the 
similarity ends, for the oft-invoked "Muse" was deaf to Keate's 
call. Nor does his epic fragment The Helvetiad (written in 1756), 
which Voltaire dissuaded him from finishing, give any evidence of 
her visitations. Yet she seems to have taken some interest in his 
nature poem, The Alps (1763), an inflated, formal, stilted work, but 
one that does reveal a knowledge and love of the mountains among 
which Keate lived for many years. It may be that few modern 
readers will derive much pleasure from the piece; but any one who 
goes through it attentively can hardly help feeling that its author 
wrote with his heart in the subject and his eye on the object, and 
that the defects of expression were to be expected at a time when 
writers were inexperienced in describing the wild and sublime in 
nature. Keate's work is notable for its observation rather than for 
its poetry; yet it contains somewhat impressive pictures of Alpine 
forests, rivers, avalanches, snow-storms, and thunder-storms. This 
is one of his best passages : 

* Dyer's octosyllabics, Grongar Hill and The Country Walk, are almost entirely 
descriptive; and his blank verse, The Fleece, shows in many single lines and in a few 
long passages an appreciation of romantic scenery, of the ocean, and particularly of the 
English landscape that is much like Thomson's. See below, pp. 446-7, 367-72. 



242 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

These as they gUde along survey their banks 
With mountains circled that appear to bend 
Beneath the woods they bear. The mournful Larch 
Its drooping foliage hangs: the stately Pines, 
Their boughs together mix'd, in close array 
(Wedg'd like the ancient Phalanx), from the axe 
Rear their tall heads secure; on craggy cliflfs • 
Rooted, or over Precipices dread 
Waving their umbrage broad.* 

It is unnecessary to dwell on the Miltonic character of these lines, 
but it should be remembered that we have no means of determining 
how much of this character may have been derived from Paradise 
Lost and how much from The Seasons. There seems to be no debt to 
the Night Thoughts, though Keate was an intimate friend and corre- 
spondent of Young's. One other matter should be noticed, — 
Keate was fortunate in his subject: the Miltonic style is much better 
adapted to describing the Alps than to teaching the care of sheep. 
We have every reason to believe that, if he had chosen to picture a 
pastoral English scene, he would have used the same language and 
style which he employed in describing an avalanche, and would 
thereby have become ridiculous. 

Yet there was at least one writer who used simple language to 
describe simple things. Towards the middle of the century Dr. 
John Brown wrote an enthusiastic letter about a visit to Keswick 
and a twenty-line description of a moonlight scene there. For con- 
veying a sense of the hushed awe and magic of a moonlight night, 
this fragment is unsurpassed in the unrimed verse of the century; 
indeed, as a rendering of a mood of nature it stands quite by itself. 
I therefore quote it all : 

Now sunk the Sun, now Twilight sunk, and Night 
Rode in her zenith; nor a passing breeze 
Sigh'd to the groves, which in the midnight air 
Stood motionless, and in the peaceful floods 
Inverted hung: For now the billow slept 
Along the shore, nor heav'd the deep, but spread 
A shining mirror to the Moon's pale orb, 
Which, dim and waining, o'er the shadowy clifts, 
The solemn woods and spiry mountain-tops 
Her glimmering faintness threw: Now every eye, 
Oppress'd with toil, was drown'd in deep repose; 
Save that the unseen shepherd in his watch, 

* Poetical Works (1781), ii. 63-4. The Alps was praised by the Critical Review (xv. 
390-91). Keate's romanticism is also seen in his descriptive elegy on Netley Abbey 
(1764). His two volumes of prose Sketches from Nature (1779) reached a fifth edition 
by 1802, besides being reprinted in America and translated into French. 



DESCRIPTIVE POETRY: THE WARTONS 243 

Propt on his crook, stood list'ning by the fold, 
And gaz'd the starry vault and pendant moon; 
Nor voice nor sound broke on the deep serene, 
But the soft murmur of swift-gushing rills. 
Forth-issuing from the mountain's distant steep, 
(Unheard till now, and now scarce heard) proclaim'd 
All things at rest, and imag'd the still voice 
Of quiet whispering to the ear of Night. ^ 

Except for the sound of streams unheard by day, these lines reveal 
no unusual closeness of observation, but in expression they are sur- 
prisingly simple and direct without being prosaic. Yet they are not 
quite free from what seem to be Miltonisms, — ''inverted hung," 
"nor heav'd the deep," "gaz'd the starry vault," "the deep serene"; 
and there is one probable borrowing, "her glimmering faintness 
threw." 2 

We have, however, been anticipating somewhat, for between the 
work of Dyer and Keate came the blank verse of the Warton broth- 
ers. The Warton family, the father and his two sons, played no 
small part in spreading the enthusiasm for Milton which character- 
ized the middle of the eighteenth century. They admired Paradise 
Lost and borrowed many phrases from it, but they belonged to a 
group of poets who were attracted to lyric measures and made slight 
use of the couplet or of blank verse (with which the most distin- 
guished of them. Gray, was not in sympathy 3). It is noteworthy, 
in view of the Wartons' enthusiasm for Milton, that the father wrote 
only four short pieces of blank verse, and that his sons produced but 
a few hundred lines of it, composing most of these in their school- 
days. Indeed, the only unrimed poem of any length that the elder 
brother, Joseph, published was practically his first poetic venture, 
The Enthusiast, or the Lover of Nature, which he wrote in 1 740. The 
title excites hopes that are not satisfied, for the poem is mainly 
a polemic on the superiority of nature to art. The descriptive pas- 
sages are nearly all conventional and bookish, indicating little close 
observation and almost none of the love of the out-of-doors which 
the author undoubtedly felt. Perhaps the following lines are an ex- 
ception; at least, they reveal unusual interest in wild scenery: 

Ye green-rob'd Dryads, oft at dusky eve 

By wondering shepherds seen, to forests brown, 

To unfrequented meads, and pathless wUds, 

^ Richard Cumberland, Odes (1776), prefatory, 5; reprinted in Anderson's British 
Poe/5 (1795), X. 887. 

^ Cf. P. L., iv. 609 (of the moon in each case). 

' Norton NichoUs's "Reminiscences," in Gray's Letters (ed. Tovey), ii. 280. 



244 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Lead me from gardens deck'd with art's vain pomps. . . 

.... let me choose some pine-topt precipice 

Abrupt and shaggy, whence a foamy stream, 

Like Anio, tumbhng roars; or some bleak heath, 

Where straggling stands the mournful juniper. 

Or yew-tree scath'd; while in clear prospect round, 

From the grove's bosom spires emerge, and smoke 

In bluish wreaths ascends, ripe harvests wave, 

Low, lonely cottages, and ruin'd tops 

Of Gothic battlements appear, and streams 

Beneath the sun-beams twinkle.' 

This love for the wild and bleak aspects of nature is carried to an 
absurd extreme in the Pleasures oj Melancholy, which Thomas War- 
ton, author of the History of English Poetry, composed in his seven- 
teenth year, 1745. The young bard is perversely determined not to 
be comfortable. He shuns "ambrosial blooms," "broider'd meads," 
and "Mirth's mad shouts," preferring, he declares, to go with Con- 
templation 

to solemn glooms 

Congenial with my soul; to cheerless shades, 

To ruin'd seats, to twilight cells and bow'rs.* 

In his love of horrors he anticipates Ann Radcliffe and "Monk" 
Lewis : 

But when the world 

Is clad in Midnight's raven-colour 'd robe, 

'Mid hollow charnel let me watch the flame 

Of taper dim, shedding a livid glare 

O'er the wan heaps; while airy voices talk 

Along the glimm'ring walls.^ 

All this comes as a surprise from the genial author of Oxford Ale, 
who was notoriously fond of his ease and of the good things of life. 
Indeed, he protests too much. Like most eighteenth-century poets 
of melancholy, he was toying with a feeling of which he knew httle. 
Then, as always, there were of course persons, like Gray and Young, 
who were inchned to depression ; but most of the hterature of gloom 
is conventional and has no more basis in actual experience than had 
the sonnet sequences of the Elizabethans. A large number of the 
odes addressed to Despair, Horror, Night, and their sister spirits 

' Lines 1-4, 29-38. Joseph Warton's four other blank-verse pieces seem Miltonic, 
but the only interest attaching to them is that three are occasional, one having been 
recited to the king when he was on a visit to Winchester College. 

* Lines 25, 27, 77, 17-19. The references are to the revised version of the poem as 
pubUshed in the Poetical Works (Oxford, 1802, i. 68-95). 

2 Lines 42-7. 



DESCRIPTIVE POETRY: THOMAS WARTON 245 

were the products of normal and what are termed "reasonably 
happy" individuals, who wrote them as a society girl tries roughing 
it or slumming, — partly to be in the fashion and partly to vary the 
monotony of ease and comfort with some of the thrills of distress. 
No one who has actually faced horrors, or knows what real depres- 
sion is, talks about the pleasures of melancholy or writes as Warton 
did: 

Few know that elegance of soul refin'd, 

Whose soft sensation feels a quicker joy 

From Melancholy's scenes, than the dull pride 

Of tasteless splendor and magnificence 

Can e'er afford. ^ 

There are not many unusual words in the Pleasures of Melancholy, 
and the style, though stilted, is less inflated than that of most blank 
verse of the time. The influence of Milton appears chiefly in the 
numerous phrases borrowed from his works (most of them from his 
minor poems) ,^ a feature that is also noticeable though less striking 
in Joseph Warton's Enthusiast. Each piece reveals some of the 
framework of Allegro and Penseroso. 

We know from his other poems that Thomas Warton really cared 
for nature, but from his treatise on melancholy we should hardly 
suspect as much. Of its three hundred and fifteen lines, these eight 
sound the least conventional and the most like personal observation : 

Yet not ungrateful is the morn's approach, 
When dropping wet she comes, and clad in clouds, 
While thro' the damp air scowls the louring south, 
Blackening the landscape's face, that grove and hill 
In formless vapours undistinguish'd swim. . . . 
.... the waving elms . . . 
Are mute, nor echo with the clamors hoarse 
Of rooks rejoicing on their airy boughs; 
While to the shed the dripping poultry crowd.^ 

But just before this passage is one which shows how imperfectly 
Warton distinguished between the conventional and the true: 

Blooming morn's approach, 
Ev'n then, in youthful pride of opening May, 
When from the portals of the saffron east 
She sheds fresh roses, and ambrosial dews. 

To Thomas Warton has been ascribed Five Pastoral Eclogues, in 
Miltonic blank verse, dealing with the horrors of war. If anything 

^ Lines 92-6. There were many eighteenth-century writers who, like Warton, en- 
joyed their melancholy and plumed themselves on it. 

^ See below. Appendix A. ^ Lines 135-46. 



246 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

can be more intolerably trite, conventional, and dull than this work, 
which appeared in 1745, it is the Four Pastoral Essays of Thomas 
Stratford, "written chiefly in the year 1756" and published at 
Dublin in 1770. From the preface to the Eclogues we learn that the 
author " endeavour 'd to imitate the simplicity of the ancients," and 
it must be admitted that both in style and in language the poems are 
much simpler than most of those published at the time. Stratford's 
trite ''Essays" have not even this virtue, for their language is often 
pompous; yet on one account the reader may prefer them to the 
"Eclogues," — there is one less of them.^ These volumes illustrate 
the difficulty poets had in freeing themselves from the conventions 
associated with a type of literature like the pastoral. When the 
poems were rimed the task was all the harder, as any one may see by 
contrasting the admirably simple, natural blank verse of John 
Scott's descriptive poem, Amwell, with the couplets of his Moral and 
of his Amoebaean "Eclogues," in which close observation is con- 
cealed by the stilted poetic diction, the frigid conventionaHty, and 
the monotonous cadences that went with the rimed pastoral. 

Until the publication of Amwell in 1776, the pleasantest descrip- 
tive blank verse written by any of Thomson's followers came from 
the pen of the gentle Michael Bruce. One may doubt whether Bruce 
would ever have become a great poet, but there can be no question 
as to the beauty of his character or the love for the Scottish country 
that his poems reveal. As the young school-teacher, not yet of age, 
lay dying of consumption, he composed a narrative and descriptive 
work of some six hundred Hues which he called Lochleven. Marred 
though it is by the constant use of conventional poetic diction,^ the 
style is, for the time, unusually natural and flowing. Bruce usually 
dwells upon the more obvious beauties of the landscape, but he 
also sees 

The patient heron, and the bittern dull, 

Deep-sounding in the base.^ 

Lines like the following, when composed as early as 1766, are notable 
for several reasons : 

1 Stratford showed his admiration for Milton by translating the first book of Para- 
dise Lost (which he thought greater than Homer or Virgil, see p. 21, n. 3, above) into 
Greek in 1770, and by using in his blank- verse Fontenoy (1784?) the involved style and 
"bloated kind of diction" which mark the Essays. Only one of the nine books of 
this last work appears to have been published (see Mo. Rev., 1784, Ixxi. 95-8), and 
this I have not seen. 

2 The diction is seldom learned or Miltonic, however. It is language like this that 
is objectionable: "To obvious swain . . . She'd bring the beauteous spoils [flowers] . . . 
ev'ry herb . . . That paints the robe of Spring . . . every warbler in the vernal wood " 
{Works, Edin., 1865, p. 182). ^ lb. 193. 



DESCRIPTIVE POETRY: BRUCE — HEADLEY 247 

While twilight meek, 
Enrob'd in mist, slow-sailing thro' the air, 
Silent and still, on ev'ry closed flow'r 
Shed drops nectareous; and around the fields 
No noise was heard, save where the whisp'ring reeds 
Wav'd to the breeze, or in the dusky air 
The slow-wing'd crane mov'd heav'ly o'er the lee, 
And shrilly clamour 'd as he sought his nest.* 

Three or four years earlier Bruce had written for a college literary 
society another unrimed piece, The Last Day, which was clearly in- 
spired by "Night's seraphic bard, immortal Young." ^ It is more 
formal and Miltonic than Lochleven and by no means so good. 

The volume which Joseph Sympson, a follower of Thomson, had 
the courage to issue in 1781, with the title The Beauties of Spring, 
though it furnished two lines for one of Wordsworth's Duddon son- 
nets,^ seems to have been no more significant than the forty pages 
of vague, conventional, sentimentalized descriptions that make up 
S. J. Pratt's Landscapes in Verse (1785). There is also much of the 
uninspired and conventional, as well as much of the hackneyed 
machinery of gloom, in Henry Headley's Invocation to Melancholy 
(1786), although genuine imaginative power appears in many of 
Headley's sombre, sonorous lines, — these, for example: 

Lo, at her call New Zealand's wastes arise! 
Casting their shadows far along the main, 
Whose brows, cloud-cap'd in joyless majesty, 
No human foot hath trod since time began; 
Here deathlike silence ever-brooding dwells, 
Save when the watching sailor startled hears, 
Far from his native land at darksome night, 
The shrUl-ton'd petrel, or the penguin's voice. 
That skim their trackless flight on lonely wing. 
Through the bleak regions of a nameless main.* 

In the days of Gray and Cowper several types of literature flour- 
ished which have since either fallen into disuse or wholly disappeared. 
One of these is the topographical poem, in which the reader is taken 
to the top of a hill, shown the surrounding country, and entertained 
with an account of such country-seats as are visible and of historical 
or legendary events connected with the neighborhood. Among the 

1 76. 191. 2 Jb.ig6. 

* No. vi. Wordsworth, in his note to this sonnet, says that Sympson "was educated 
... at Hawkeshead school: his poems are little known, but they contain passages of 
splendid description." Knight identifies him with the "Pastor" of The Excursion. 
I know the Beauties only from the Critical Review, lii. 201-3. 

* Poetical Works (in T. Park's British Poets, 1808, vol. xli), p. 15. 



248 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

best things in The Task are some two hundred lines in the first book 
which might easily be detached from the rest to form a poem of this 
kind.^ The first and most notable example of the type, however, 
seems to have been the delightful Coopers Hill (1642) of Sir John 
Denham, which was much admired in the period we are studying. 
The second in point of time and of importance was Dyer's octo- 
syllabic Grongar Hill (1726), which, however, is lyric rather than 
descriptive. These two pieces are in rime; ^ and, as they are much 
earlier, rather different in plan, and in other respects unlike the 
blank-verse loco-descriptive works, they had little apparent influ- 
ence on the type or on its popularity. 

For in the forty years following 1767 the unrimed topographical 
poem enjoyed such a vogue that for a considerable period in the 
latter part of the century practically all the descriptive blank verse 
written was of this kind. The Gentleman's Magazine complained in 
1788 that readers "have been used to see the Muses labouring up . . . 
many hills since Cooper's and Grongar, and some gentle Bard reclin- 
ing on almost every mole-hill." ^ One thing, at least, may be said of 
the form, — it was not artificial. Persons who live near a hill are 
constantly climbing it for the sake of the view ; and what is more 
natural, if one writes verses, than to attempt to picture a favorite 
scene? Now, since naturalness was what descriptive poetry most 
needed, the spontaneity of these pictures may explain why they con- 
stitute the most pleasing of the early descriptions of rural scenery. 
It is also worth noting that such pieces are typical of their time in 
dwelling upon the larger and more obvious beauties of rural scenery. 
Many persons enjoy the view from a hill who see no charm in the 
winding country road that takes them thither, in weeds blossom- 
ing by crumbling stone-walls, or in a lonely marsh at twilight. We 
have heard very Httle thus far about the quieter beauties of nature; 
it is the sweet and pretty or the grand and sublime that have been 
dwelt on. This does not mean that no one felt the simpler beauties, 
but that poets had not thought of writing about them. 

Although the vogue of the topographical poem seems to have 
begun in 1767,^ there is nothing about the work which was published 

1 i. 141-366. ' ' Iviii. 151. 

2 For later rimed poems of this class, see below, Appendix C A. 

* On some accounts W. H. Draper's Morning Walk, or City Encompass'd (1751), 
belongs in this class and is thus the earliest unrimed poem of the kind; yet, as there is 
no hill and practically no description of nature in the piece, which is devoted mainly to 
the evils of gin, it hardly belongs here. It is, rather, a pedestrian survey — extremely 
pedestrian from the esthetic point of view — of the outskirts of London, described in 
the blank verse of one of Draper's favorite works. Paradise Lost (see the Morning Walk, 
pp. xi-xiii, 14, 27, 34, 39, 69, 72-3). James Fortescue's Pomery-Hill, 1754 (see Gent. 



TOPOGRAPHICAL POETRY: JAGO 249 

on that date to invite imitation. It is, in truth, a stilted, dreary- 
production, Richard Jago's Edge-Hill, in which, as its sub-title 
announces, "the Rural Prospect" is "delineated and moralized" 
through four books !^ Of moralizing there is certainly no lack, but 
the rural prospect is hardly Jago's chief concern. He is interested 
rather in picturing country estates, in complimenting the gentry, 
and in describing the mines and manufactures of the region. 
The "Muse," he writes, cannot 

Forget her Shenstone, in the youthful Toil 
Associate; whose bright Dawn of Genius oft 
Smooth'd my incondite Verse; 2 

yet she seems to have no memory of Somervile, who performed the 
same function, and who through this assistance, as well as through 
his example in The Chace, may have had some effect upon the blank 
verse of Edge-Hill. Jago's pompous style and language are ill 
adapted to his subject and are manifestly influenced by Paradise 
Lost. Proof of this influence will be found in his borrowings from 
Milton's work,' and in his oratorio, Adam, or the Fatal Disobedience, 

Mag.,xsxv. 24s), and the anonymous Cooper's Hill, 1766? (see Crit. Rev., xxii. 380-81) , 
I have not seen. Clackshugh, a Poem in MiUonic Verse (1755) , by an exciseman named 
Daniel, is a tumid, conventional hill-poem of two hundred lines which gives some 
account of mining. 

^ This sub- title might well serve for almost all the descriptive pieces of the century; 
for not only were the bards of the day, like their descendants in America a few genera- 
tions later, consumed with a desire to "moralize their song," but critics and readers 
were practically unanimous in emphasizing the necessity of obvious didacticism in all 
serious poetry. As a result, The Seasons is "moralized" throughout, and The Task, 
though remembered chiefly for its descriptive passages, is at least three-quarters 
didactic. Perhaps most writers felt with Ogilvie, when he "indulged himself very freely 
in the vein of moral sentiment arising naturally from the subject," that it was a diflacult 
matter "to give a sensible mind entertainment, in the perusal of a descriptive poem of 
any length" {Paradise, 1769, advertisement). 

* iii. 351-3. The references are all to the first edition, which dififers considerably 
from the one published by Chalmers, presumably the last. 

' For example, "Guardian Spirits, which round Paradise Perform'd their nightly 
Watch" (i. 3-4, cf. P. L.,\i. 412-13, iv. 684-5, 778-80, etc.); rivers that "further still 
their humid Train . . . drew . . . And in the tender Ooze . . . Fretted" their "winding 
Track" (i. 102-6, cf. P. L., vii. 302-6) ; references to Uriel, who upon the sun's "Even- 
ing-Beam to Paradise Came gliding down" and "on its sloping Ray To his bright 
Charge return'd"(i. 507-10, cf. P. L., iv. 555-6, 589-91), and to Michael, who "on 
Eden's Hill" removed the "film" from Adam's eyes "and purg'd his visual Nerve To 
see Things yet unform'd" (i. 510-13, cf. P. L., xi. 377-8, 411-15). The lines, 

Hence fabling Poets feign'd 
Th' enchanted Castle, and its cursed Train 
Of Goblins, Furies, and Chimeras dire! 

(i. 406-8), recall Comus, 513-17, and P. L., ii. 628. At iii. 43-4 Jago has put within 
quotation-marks "But Cloud instead and ever-during Night Surround it" (cf. P. L., 
iii. 45-6), and at iv. 13 "With Song of early Birds" (cf. P. L., iv. 651). 



250 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

compiled from the Paradise Lost (1784). Conventional poetic diction 
abounds in Edge-Hill: ''richly-painted Flow'rs," in "Flora's Liv'ry 
gaily dight," form an '' embroider 'd Verge of various Dyes"; a nun- 
nery is a "chaste Asylum to the female Train," and coal "the 
crumbly Rock" or (in later editions) "the sable rock inflammable." ^ 
Yet, dull as the poem is, refreshing breezes occasionally blow across 
its arid wastes fraught with the fragrance of such unconscious 

humor as, 

The Scissars' double Shaft, 
Useless apart, in social Union join'd. 
Each aiding each! Emblem how beautiful 
Of happy nuptial Leagues! "^ 

More typical of Jago at his best is a picture like this : 

There, white with Flocks, and, in her num'rous Herds 
Exulting, Chadsunt's Pastures, large, and fair 
Salute the Sight, and witness to the Fame 
Of Lichfield's mitred Saint. The furzy Heaths 
Succeed; close Refuge of the tim'rous Hare, 
Or prowling Fox, but Refuge insecure! 
From their dark Covert oft the Hunter-Train 
Rouse them unwUKng, and, o'er HUl, and Dale, 
With wild, tumultuous Joy, their Steps pursue.' 

This passage might well have been taken from among the poorer 
of the four hundred and forty-six lines of Amwell, which John Scott 
published the year the American colonies declared their independ- 
ence. Nothing could be less suggestive of "war, or battle's sound," 
or even of "the busy hum of men," than this quiet, simple pastoral 
which breathes of the Quaker faith, the pensiveness, and the abun- 
dant leisure of its lovable author. Scott finds his joy in gazing upon 
"smooth vales by winding streams Divided," 

romantic farms. 
And humble cots of happy shepherd swains; 
Dehghtful habitations! with the song 
Of birds melodious charm'd, and bleat of flocks 
From upland pastures heard, and low of kine 
Grazing the rushy mead, and mingled sounds 
Of falling waters and of whisp'ring winds.* 

His " roving sight " loves to range 

Where frequent hedge-rows intersect rich fields 
Of many a different form and different hue. 
Bright with ripe corn, or green with grass, or dark 
With clover's purple bloom.' 

1 ii. 40, i. 547, ii. 28; ii. 382, ill. 502. 2 m 551-4. 

3 ii. 94-102. * Lines 255-6, 259-65. ' Lines i73~6. 



TOPOGRAPHICAL POETRY: SCOTT 25 1 

These last lines show that, although he usually dwells upon the 
broad, obvious aspects of the familiar English landscape so dear to 
him, he also feels some of its shyer, more evanescent beauties. Else- 
where he mentions the ''slender group of airy elm," the ''walnut's 
gloomy breadth of boughs," the "willow groves . . . with trembling 
tufts Of osier intermix'd," the "linden pale, and blossom'd thorn 
Breathing mild fragrance," and the "rich perfume" of "blooming 
beans." ^ 

In such pictures of nature and in most other respects Atnwell is 
far better than Edge-Hill, and yet the two are much alike. Both, 
for example, are hill-poems. Scott takes us. 

By winding pathways thro' the waving corn, 

to "the airy point that prospect yields," shows us the view in one 
direction and then in another, tells us about the legends and the his- 
torical or literary associations of the region, muses, moralizes, and 
at length, "oft looking back, and lingering," leads us down.^ He 
also makes liberal use of the artificial, hackneyed diction that dis- 
figures Jago's work. We wander with him 

In verdant meads, by Lee's cerulean stream, 

by "flowery meads And shining silver rills," through the "verdant 
maze" or beside the "irriguous marge " or up "th' acclivious steep" 
where "Favonius' wing . . . Wafts balmy redolence"; we see the 
"swain" guiding the "shining share" as he tills the "glebe"; we are 
told that, as the "circulating sanguine fluid" extends through the 
"arterial tubes," so the "limpid store" or "purchas'd wave" of 
"mercenary" streams is brought to cities.^ Scott thoroughly ap- 
proved of expressions like these, and censured Thomson for such 
"prosaisms" as "stealing from the barn a straw," "clean and com- 
plete," and "to tempt the trout."'* Yet it was principally from 
Thomson and his followers that he derived his diction as well as his 
style, an indebtedness he frankly acknowledged by invoking the 
"Descriptive Muse" who had inspired "the Seasons . . . Grongar 
Hill, the Ruins of Rome, and that excellent neglected poem, the 
Fleece," and who had "to Shenstone's ear" brought "sweet strains 
of rural melody." ^ 

1 Lines 293, 295, 290-92, 82-3, 308-9. 2 Lines 39, 40, 379. 
3 Lines 50 (cf. 180, 272), 237 (cf. 104), 92, 270, 383, 405-7; 408-12; 129, 127, 112, 
131,123. 

* See p. 142 above. 

* Lines 11-19, and notes. In the note to line 443 he mentions "the sublime Collins." 
Though a friend of Johnson's, Scott wrote sonnets (see Bibl. IV, 1766-70), an ode mod- 



252 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

How much Scott owed to the original father of blank- verse poetry 
it would be hard to say. He used a number of Miltonic phrases, — 
"pleasant interchange of soft ascent And level plain," " tufted trees," 
"rustling leaves. The sound of water murmuring . . . and music soft 
Of distant bells ... In slow sad measure mov'd," "mantling vines," 
"blissful seat." ^ Lines like 

Not for these, or aught 
Beside, wish I in hyperbolic strains 
Of vain applause to elevate your fame,^ 

recall Paradise Lost rather than The Seasons, and there is something 
of the sonorous Miltonic pomp in the reference to the aqueduct, 

suppos'd a work 
Of matchless skill, by those who ne'er had heard 
How, from Preneste's heights and Anio's banks 
By TivoLi, to Rome's imperial walls. 
On marble arches came the limpid store, 
And out of jasper rocks in bright cascades 
With never ceasing murmur gush'd; or how, 
To LusiTANiAN Ulysippo's towers. 
The silver current o'er Alcant'ra's vale 
RoU'd high in air, as ancient poets feign'd 
Eridanus to roll thro' Heaven.^ 

But in general, as must be clear from the first two passages quoted 
above, Scott is much more simple, direct, and natural than his prede- 
cessors. As compared with theirs, his style is neither pompous nor 
involved, and his diction, though conventional, is not learned or 
Latinic. In these respects, as in his genuine love for the milder, 
more famihar aspects of nature and in his charming expression of 
that love, he takes a distinct step forward. 

Very different from Amwell is Leith Hill, a work given to the world, 
apparently by Peter Cunningham, in 1779, which was thus sum- 

elled upon Milton's octosyllabics (Bibl. II, 1762 w.), and an interesting volume of 
"Critical Essays" (1785) on Coopers Hill, Lycidas, Windsor Forest, Grongar Hill, 
Ruins of Rome, Oriental Eclogues, Gray's Elegy, The Deserted Village, and The Seasons. 

1 Lines 44-5 (cf. P. L., ix. 115-16), 186 (cf. Allegro, 78), 197-201 (cf. Penseroso, 129, 
144, 74-6), 303 (cf. Comus, 294), 438 (cf. P. L., i. 5, iii. 527). 

The marge 
Of smooth translucent pools, where willows green . . . 
(428-9), was perhaps suggested by Comus, 232, 861. 

* Lines 418-20. 

' Lines 108-18. These passages might, however, have been suggested by Thomson. 
Scott uses a number of sonorous names again in lines 246-51, 267-74. Inversions 
abound in his poem, and there are many adjectives used as adverbs, as in "streamers 
gay Triumphant fluttering" (62-3), "her iron reign Ruthless extends" (205-6), 
"jocund chants" (324), "annual ye resound . . . as he . . . Guides slow his shining 
share; ye annual hear The shouts" (410-13). 



TOPOGRAPHICAL POETRY: CROWE 253 

marily disposed of by the Gentleman's Magazine, "In blank verse, 
high-sounding language, without clear ideas," ^ an admirable char- 
acterization of many of the poems we have been considering. Can 
there be any doubt that it is Miltonic? George Wallace's Prospects 
from Hills in Fife, pubhshed in 1796 but written "many years ago," 
certainly is. It likewise uses " blank verse, high-sounding language," 
and, though evidently more poetical than Leith Hill, seems to con- 
tain more digressions than prospects.^ 

By no means all loco-descriptive pieces are like these. William 
Crowe's Lewesdon Hill (1788), which at one time had many readers, 
went through several editions, and was praised by Wordsworth, 
Coleridge, Moore, Rogers, and Bowles,^ only to be forgotten soon 
after its sturdy author's death, is still enjoyable. Its descriptions, 
though few, are of excellent quality. This is one of the best : 

How changed is thy appearance, beauteous hill! 
Thou hast put off thy wintry garb, brown heath 
And russet fern, thy seemly-colour'd cloak 
To bide the hoary frosts and dripping rains 
Of chill December, and art gaily robed 
In livery of the spring: upon thy brow 
A cap of flowery hawthorn, and thy neck 
Mantled with new-sprung furze and spangles thick 
Of golden bloom: nor lack thee tufted woods 
Adown thy sides: Tall oaks of lusty green, 
The darker fir, light ash, and the nesh tops 
Of the young hazel join, to form thy skirts.* 

Most of the work is concerned with dignified and rather sombre re- 
flections expressed with something of the large Miltonic utterance 
found in these Hues : 

Nor yet that elder work (if work it were, 

Not fable) raised upon the Phrygian shore, 

(Where lay the fleet confederate against Troy, 

A thousand ships behind the vasty mole 

All shelter 'd) could with this compare, though built 

It seem'd, of greatness worthy to create 

Envy in the immortals. . . . 

But what is yonder Hill, whose dusky brow 
Wears, like a regal diadem, the round 
Of antient battlements and ramparts high; 
And frowns upon the vales? I know thee not.* 

^ lix. 1019 (1789). 

^ See Scots Mag., Iviii. 623-7. I know these two poems only from the reviews. 

' See Wordsworth's postscript to the Duddon sonnets (1820); Coleridge's Watch- 
man, April 2, 1796, and Biographia Literaria (Bohn ed.), 8; Moore's Memoirs (1853), 
ii. 180; Rogers's Table-Talk (ed. Dyce, 2d ed., 1856), 225-9; Notes and Queries, 2d 
series, vi. 42-3. * Page 2. * Pages 17, 20. 



254 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Crowe's style, it will be observed, though formal and Miltonic, is 
not grandiose, nor is his language of the popular Philips-Thomson 
variety. This virtue may be due in part to the example of Amwell, 
but more probably it is derived from The Task, which appeared 
three years before Crowe's poem.^ 

At the time of their publication, the Lyrical Ballads and Gebir 
seemed to many readers and critics no more significant than did two 
topographical poems on Malvern Hills which appeared the same 
year, 1798. In fact, while the puzzled reviewers spoke of the Ancient 
Mariner as **the strangest story of a cock and bull that we ever 
saw," 2 they said that one of the hill-pieces "bids fair to live as long 
as the language in which it is written, or the mountains which it 
celebrates shall stand." ^ In reality both Malvern poems are dull 
affairs, containing much obvious moralizing, many commonplace 
reflections on life, and a small amount of description. Both are un- 
mistakably Miltonic. One was from the prolific but uninspired pen 
of Joseph Cottle, the publisher-friend of Southey and Coleridge; 
the other was by a clergyman, Luke Booker. Cottle's work, which 
Wordsworth liked well enough to quote from,^ is not unnatural in 
style and at its best is pleasing in a mild, pastoral way. Most of 
Booker's struts so absurdly that it might easily be taken for a 
parody; but a few passages are surprisingly good, and the following 
lines, unusual both in observation and in expression, are among the 
very best that we have thus far met: 

The slender stems 
Of hare-bells blue are motionless and still: 
The thistle-down assumes its silvery wing, 
As if to wanton with the morning breeze, 
But to the ground, unboyant, soon descends. 
Tranquillity the elements pervades, 
And Harmony the woods. No cloud obscures 
The wide horizon's undulating Hne, 
Where join'd seem earth and sky, — where azure mist 
Veils the soft landscape melting into light.^ 

^ Crowe's admiration for Cowper is expressed in his Treatise on English Versification 
(1727), 72, 306, 310. His knowledge of Milton appears throughout the same volume, 
especially at pages 26-8, 318-34, as well as in such phrases in his Lewesdon Hill as 
"above the noise and stir of yonder fields" (p. 4, cf . Contus, 5), "won from the straiten'd 
main" (p. 16, cf. P. L., iii. 12), "arches massy proof" (p. 16, cf. Penseroso, 158), 
"hazardous emprize" (p. 16, cf. P. L., xi. 642), and possibly "villages Half-hid in 
tufted orchards" (p. i, cf. Allegro, 78). * Mo. Rev.,en\. ed., xxix. 204. 

3 Gent. Mag., Ixxii. 16 (letter by "J. W." concerning Booker's Malvern). 

* Prelude, viii. 48-52. Lamb laughed at the piece in a letter to Manning (Novem- 
ber, 1802), but said it was "very popular." 

' Malvern (Dudley, 1798), p. 9; see also pp. 7-8. Booker's other unrimed tope- 



TOPOGRAPHICAL POETRY: MRS. SMITH — NOBLE 255 

In the decade between the publication of Crowe's work and the 
Malvern pieces but one unrimed hill-poem seems to have appeared, 
the two pages of tame, conventional, but decidedly Miltonic verse 
which H. F. Cary, the translator of Dante, published in 1794 as 
The Mountain Seat} Nor did the number increase, for the next 
thirty years apparently saw only four more. In the first of these, 
Beachy Head (1807), the "stupendous summit" is little more than a 
starting-point from which Charlotte Smith, the sonneteer and 
novelist, wanders at will. Mrs. Smith, "an early worshipper" of 
nature and of its "rudest scenes — warrens, and heaths. And yellow 
commons," ^ had also a sharp eye for many things overlooked by her 
contemporaries. She saw, for example, the frightened rooks "rising 
slow on whispering wings " ; she noticed 

in the breeze 
That wafts the thistle's plumed seed along, 
Blue bells wave tremulous. The mountain thyme 
Purples the hassock of the heaving mole, 
And the short turf is gay with tormentU, 
And bird's foot trefoil, and the lesser tribes 
Of hawk weed; spangling it with fringed stars.' 

No such vivid details give Ufe to the forty-five pages of tumid Mil- 
tonic blank verse which make up William Hamilton Drummond's 
Clontarf (1822), but instead "roves th' excursive glance" o'er "peren- 
nial verdure," "crystal rills," and "finny tribes." * 

Meanwhile Thomas Noble had shown in his Blackheath (1808) 
how slowly the human race learns, for the grandiose diction and 
pompous yet crabbed style of its two thousand lines have most of 
the defects of Philips 's Cyder, which appeared a hundred years be- 
fore. Had John Scott, Cowper, and even Wordsworth written to no 
purpose? The trouble is not that the poem is perfunctory, not that 

graphical poem, Knowle Hill (1789), which I have not seen, is reviewed in the Critical 
Renew (new arr., x. 41). 

^ Gent. Mag., Ixiv. 161-2. The similarity to Milton is not limited to the style, but 
includes such borrowings as "cornfield and pasture, pleasing interchange" (cf. P. L., 
ix. 115-16), "in close covert of immuring shades" (cf. Penseroso, 139, Comus, 521, 
P. L., iv. 693), "boon Nature" (cf. P. L., iv. 242), "if chance a parting gleam, shot 
from the West" (cf. P. L., ii. 492), "palmer's weeds of amice grey" (cf. Comus, 189, 
P. 22., iv. 427). 

^ Beachy Head, etc. (1807), p. 24. 

* /&. 32,31. 

* The Irish Unitarian clergyman who composed Clontarf (and also the Pleasures of 
Benevolence, see below, p. 393) should not be confused with other William Drummonds, 
some of whom were writing at the same time. Clontarf, a village near Dublin, was 
the scene of a battle with the Danes which figures prominently in the poem. Pages 
xiii and xiv of the preface are devoted to a discussion of "Loco-descriptive Poetry." 



256 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

it merely repeats what has been said before, but that, like many- 
others, Noble was unable to give adequate expression to what he 
felt. His love of the country was genuine and his power of observa- 
tion unusual, but they were submerged under the turgid pomposity 
which had been so long associated with blank verse that most readers 
failed to recognize it as pomposity. In the following passages, how- 
ever, which are among the best in the poem, Noble's defects are not 
glaring; 

There, the plover skims, 
With wailful cry, along the sedgy dykes; 
And water-locusts, on pellucid wings 
Azure or green, flit, circling, o'er the stream, 
Or, lightly settling on the tremulous reeds, 
Spread their cerulean vans. 

And the thrush, 
Whirring thro' every coppice, pours his note 
With wilder cadence: — then, each object round, 
In soft succession, seems to fade away, 
And tender shadows, deepening as they blend, 
RoU slowly upward from the darkened vales, 
Cling to the hills, and on the cloudless air 
Steam, manding, 'mid the lingering flush of day.* 

The last topographical poem ^ seems to be Banwell Hill, which 
William Lisle Bowles brought out in 1828, a year after Alfred and 
Charles Tennyson pubhshed their first volume. The late date is not 
significant, however, as the genre had long been dead. Bowles, who 
was sixty-six when he composed this, almost his last piece, was only 
reverting to a disused form which had been in vogue in his boyhood.^ 
He himself calls it a "local descriptive poem," and it clearly belongs 
to the class: the hill and the prospect from it, the moralizing, even 
the distant villages and country estates, are aU there. The pleasing, 
pensive descriptions of scenery that give a quiet beauty to Bowles's 
sonnets lend charm to parts of this piece also; but as a whole it is 
tiresome and unreadable, like his other long works. It is seen at its 
best in such lines as these: 

1 V. 89-94, 208-15. Blackheath differs from other loco-descriptive poems in that it 
includes the views from a number of hills located on the same heath. 

2 Except W. ^. Roscoe's fragmentary Contemplative Day, "suggested by scenery in 
the neighbourhood of Allerton, and Woolton Hill" {Poems, 1834, pp. 128-58), a 
pleasing, somewhat wistful and desultory production in the manner of Bowles. Like 
Roscoe's translation from The Messiah (see below, pp. 351-2), it is decidedly Miltonic 
in its style and in some of its phrasing, more so than would be expected in a descriptive 
poem of its date. 

3 Similarly, Mrs. Smith was fifty-seven when she wrote Beachy Head and Drum- 
mond forty-four when he pubUshed Clontarf. 



TOPOGRAPHICAL POETRY: BOWLES 257 

But I view 
Brean Down beyond; and there thy winding sands, 
Weston; and, far away, one wandering ship, 
Where stretches into mist the Severn sea. 

Along this solitary ridge. 
Where smiles, but rare, the blue campanula, 
Among the thistles and gray stones that peep 
Through the thin herbage, to the highest point 
Of elevation, o'er the vale below. 
Slow let us climb. 1 

The Miltonic element in these descriptions has almost reached the 
vanishing point, but in passages like the following, which attempt a 
loftier strain, it is unmistakable : 

With sober splendour, yet not gorgeous. 
Her mitred brow tempered with lenity 
And apostolic mildness — in her mien 
No dark defeature, beautiful as mild. 
And gentle as the smile of charity, — 
Thus on the Rock of Ages may uplift 
Her brow majestic.^ 

Bowles was the author of three shorter hill-poems, — Coombe- 
Ellen (1798), St. MichaeVs Mount (1798, which is rimed and owes 
something to Lycidas)^ and Sketch from Bowden Hill after Sickness 
(1809); he also wrote a number of other pieces in the blank verse of 
Paradise Lost, three of which, the Spirit of Discovery by Sea (1804), 
the Grave of the Last Saxon (1822), and St. John in Patmos (1833), 
are of considerable length. Nearly all make frequent use of Milton's 
words and phrases,* are somewhat plaintive in tone, contain numer- 
ous descriptive passages, are ''subservient to that which alone can 
give dignity to poetry, — the cause of moral and religious truth," ^ 
— and, though tame and diffuse, are otherwise unobjectionable. 
Bowles needed the restrictions of the sonnet form and the stimulus of 
youthful emotion. 

Not all loco-descriptive poems deal with hills. There is a group, 
for instance, that pictures the West Indies, — Nathaniel Weekes's 
Barbados (1754), John Singleton's General Description of the West- 
Indian Islands (1767), and George Heriot's Descriptive Poem, 

^ i- 7S~8, 183-8. 2 V. 178-84. 5 Seelines 247-72. 

* A striking instance occurs in these lines from Coombe-Ellen (241-2; cf. Lycidas, 
132, and Samson, i): 

Return, my Muse! the fearful sound is past; 

And now a little onward. 
' Introduction to Grave of the Last Saxon. 



258 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

written in the West Indies (1781). Any one who wishes an account 
in Miltonic verse of the customs, climate, fauna, and flora of these 
islands will find it here, but if he asks for poetry he will be given 
instead lines like these: 

For pickles, sweetmeats, cordials, and preserves, 
The world resounds thy praise; without these gifts, 
What figure would a British side-board make? ^ 

There is also John Fitchett's "little descriptive poem," which cele- 
brates country life and "the ancient mansion of Bewsey ... in that 
kind of style which is formed by reading Thomson and similar 
authors." ^ Nathaniel Howard's tumid, highly-colored, Bickleigk 
Vale (1804) has not even the merit which Dr. Johnson allowed to 
Gray, — that of being "dull in a new way"; and the praise it re- 
ceives in N. T. Carrington's Dartmoor (1826) ^ would carry more 
weight if Carrington himself exhibited greater poetic gifts. Both 
pieces gain some interest from their subject (for "Bickleigh's vale 
romantic" is on Dartmoor),* and from the genuine love for nature 
even in her grander aspects which their authors display. As might 
be expected, the sombre, epic beauty of the general appearance of 
the moors so impressively described and interpreted in the Return of 
the Native is scarcely, if at all, touched upon by either Howard or 
Carrington. Both writers make free use of inversions, of adjectives 
in place of adverbs, and of other Miltonisms, and both spoil the 
naturalness of their poems by conventional and inflated diction.^ 
Francis Webb's Somerset (181 1) is in part suggested by the view from 
a hill. Its cold, stiff, rhetorical style — which, like some of its ideas, 
reminds one of Akenside — effectively conceals any feeling for the 
out-of-doors that Webb may have had, but not his admiration for 
Milton. He writes, for example. 

Now dubious Twilight sheds a glimm'ring beam; 
And sober Evening, clad in amice grey. 
Silent and soft her step, comes slowly on.^ 

1 Weekes, Barbados (see Mo. Rev., xi. 328). I have seen only reviews of this work 
and of Heriot's Descriptive Poem (see Crit. Rev., lii. 147). Weekes is ridiculed, to- 
gether with Ogilvie, Mason, and others who decried imitation of the ancients, in A. C. 
Schomberg's empty, confusing satire, Bagley, a Descriptive Poem (Oxford, 1777). 

- Crit. Rev., new arr., xvii. 353. The extract in the New Annual Register, 1796, pp. 
[167-8], shows that the poem (which I have not seen) is decidedly Miltonic, as is 
Fitchett's long epic King Alfred (see p. 312 below). 

3 Second ed., p. 19. 

* Fehcia Hemans in 1821, and Joseph Cottle in 1823, also pubUshed poems on 
Dartmoor. The first is rimed; I have not seen the second. 

^ For Howard's other poems that show the influence of Milton, see below, p. 354, 
and Bibls. I, II, III c, under the year 1804. 

• Page 38; cf. P. L., iv. 598-9, and P. R., iv. 426-7. 



DESCRIPTIVE POETRY: HURDIS 259 

When we leave the topographical poem and return to the other 
forms of descriptive verse, we must retrace our steps to 1788. At 
this time, it may be remembered, Scott's Amwell had been in circu- 
lation only twelve years and The Task only three. These facts are 
important, for they point to a new era in blank verse: the Phihps- 
Thomson type was giving way before the simpler, more natural 
variety that Cowper used. For this turn of the tide The Task was of 
course not solely, perhaps not even chiefly, responsible, for we have 
seen the change coming through the work of Brown, Bruce, and Scott. 
Even if Cowper had never written, it must have come quite as in- 
evitably, though more slowly. The Task did, however, by its popu- 
larity help to crystallize taste. It apparently furnished a model to 
unoriginal poets and gave courage to timid ones; for, with one 
exception, every important descriptive poem published after this 
time is much nearer to Cowper's verse than to Thomson's. This by 
no means implies that the popularity or the influence of The Seasons 
was over, — far from it; it is only that forward-looking writers of 
finer taste felt the advantages of the more natural and supple 
manner. 

The most conversational style produced in the eighteenth century, 
one that at times skirts dangerously near, if it does not reach, the 
baldness of prose, is that of James Hurdis. Lines like these come as 
a surprise from an Oxford professor of poetry: 

'Come,' said the careful father, 'weep no more. 

Go to the cot, ere chilly ev'ning come, 

And the damp wood affect thee. Where's my daughter?' » 

Yet Hurdis held his professorship eight years (i 793-1 801). His first 
work, the Village Curate, appeared in 1788, the year in which Crowe, 
who was public orator of the university, published Lewesdon Hill. 
The two poems enjoyed almost equal popularity, the Village Curate 
going through four editions by 1797, besides being reprinted in 
America. Yet they are very different in style, as may be seen by 
contrasting the following Unes (among the best in Hurdis's work) 
with those previously quoted from Crowe's : 

One labour more the cheerful hand awaits; 
Then the glad year is done. We seize with joy 
The precious interval, and shape our walk 
At early ev'ning down the meadow path; 
Till sunk into the vale, fast by the brook 
We spy the blooming hop, and with light heart 
The glorious garden enter. . . . 

^ Adriano (1790), p. 63. 



26o THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

.... Long let us stray, 
Enjoy the grateful covert, and admire 
The one continued cluster over-head 
Of blossoms interwoven, and depending 
E'en to the touch and smell. Long let us stray, 
And ever as we come to the flat mead 
And quit the garden with reluctance. . . .' 

This is not great poetry, but it is pleasing, and the easy, natural 
flow of the lines comes as a welcome change from what we have 
been reading. Hurdis undoubtedly owed much to Cowper, with 
whom he corresponded and whom he twice mentions in this work; ^ 
and, though he was temperamentally lacking in vigor, it may be in 
part due to The Task that the Village Curate is thin, invertebrate, 
and ultra-conversational. 

Yet, chatty, pleasant sentimentalist though he was, he was not 
able to free himself entirely from the conventional diction and gran- 
diose style which had become fastened upon blank verse and which 
give his work an old-fashioned sound. He speaks, for example, of 
"Philomel," the "fair," "the flexile path," the "long beloiter'd 
day," "the azure canopy of heav'n," "the azure covert of these 
veins," "matters strangely complicate," and addresses "ye thought- 
less young " with the counsel, 

Deem it not hard 
If old experience check your wild career.' 

It is in phrases and lines like these — and there are many of them — 
that the Village Curate is most Mil tonic; the descriptive passages, as 
may be seen in that quoted above, do not often produce a Miltonic 
impression. Yet Hurdis leaves no one in doubt as to his familiarity 
with Paradise Lost, for his first three and a half lines are taken 
verbatim from the opening of it, and there are a number of other 
Miltonic borrowings scattered through the Village Curate.* 

^ Firsted. (1788), pp. 92-3. 

2 lb. 2, 118. "It was the chief ambition of Hurdis to be like Cowper," remarked 
H. F. Cary {Memoir, by Henry Gary, 1847, ii. 295). 

3 lb. 38 (and 56, 116, etc.), 59 (and 76, 86, 88, 116, etc.), 5°, 59 (cf- 115), 38, 59, 
37, 82 (of. Penseroso, 173). 

* '' Veil'd in a show'r of roses and perfumes" (p. i, cf. P. L., ix. 425-6); "the fore- 
head of the morning" (p. 16, cf. Lycidas, 171); "come and aid my song . . . Dip my 
advent' rous pen" (p. 22, cf. P. L., i. 13); "the thick maze Of movements intricate, 
confus'd" (p. 29, cf. P. L., v. 622-3); "his axle cools" (p. 51, cf. Comus, 96, of the sun 
in each case); " the wealth of Ind " (p. 52,cf.P. L.,n. 2); " the deep artillery of heav'n " 
PP- 53, 85, cf. P. L., ii. 715); "when day His garish eye has veil'd" (p. 77, cf. Pense- 
roso, 141); "pent up in city stench" (p. 92, cf. P. L., ix. 445); "with awful reverence" 
(p. 105, cf. P. L., ii. 478); "Confusion reigns, uproar and loud mis-rule" (p. 112, cf. 
P. L.,iii. 710, vii. 271); "holds attention mute" (p. 119, cf. P. L.,i. 618); "half flying, 



DESCRIPTIVE POETRY: HURDIS 26 1 

In 1790, two years after the publication of his first work, Hurdis 
brought out a sentimental Sunday-School story in blank verse to 
which he gave the romantic title Adriano. The bald, prosaic lines 
quoted a few pages above ^ are typical of the poem, except in being 
quite free from inversions and other characteristics of Paradise Lost, 
of which it makes some use. A similar versified story, Elmer and 
Ophelia, which Hurdis published later in the same year, shows little 
influence from Milton but impresses upon women a moral of which 
he would have heartily approved : 

Come then and learn, thou lovely friend of Man, 
Main-spring of all his actions good and bad, 
Learn all thy duty in one word, obey.^ 

From these two poems it would seem that Hurdis had largely eman- 
cipated himself from the inflated style and language that are so ill 
adapted to rural descriptions. In reality he had done nothing of the 
kind, for in his remaining works he becomes increasingly Miltonic' 
Tears oj Affection (1794), a lugubrious piece similar to the Night 
Thoughts in its enjoyment of grief ,^ is written in a more formal style 
than that of its predecessors, and the Favorite Village, which ap- 
peared in 1800, a year before its author's death, is decidedly Thom- 
sonian.^ Struggling through the turgidity of expression in this last 

half on foot" (p. 133, cf. P. L., ii. 941-2); "hide your diminish'd heads" (p. 139, cf . 
P. L., iv. 35) ; " the adamantine gates Of treble-bolted Hell" (p. 142, cf. P. L.,u. 645-6) ; 

Like the vanquish'd fiend, 

Out-cast of heav'n, oft thro' their armed files 

Darts an experienc'd eye, and feels his heart 

Distend with pride (p. 7, cf. P. L., i. 567-72); 

Things unat tempted yet in prose or rhjmie, 
A shiUing, breeches, and chimaeras dire 

(p. 13s, cf. P. L., i. 16, ii. 628). On page 106 Hurdis himself points out an allusion to 
Milton's Satan, while two lines on page 1 20 and ten on pages 130-31 contain references 
to Milton in terms adapted from his epic (P. L., vii. 12-14, iii. 26-44). 

^ Page 259. ^ Poew5(i79o),p. 57. 

^ An earlier piece, Panthea (in great part written several years before 1790, when it 
was published), is taken from Xenophon's Cyropaedia, and in its narrative portions uses 
a more condensed, epic style than does Hurdis's other work. The extensive dialogues 
are non-Miltonic, probably because Panthea was first conceived as a play. 

* Note particularly pp. 32-4, 58-9. The appeals to Alcanor, and the declamatory, 
fault-finding tone of the smug minister, which mar parts of the Village Curate, also 
remind one of the Night Thoughts. 

' The account of the robin's visit to a house in winter (pp. 123-6) recalls that in 
Thomson {Winter, 245-56); and expressions like these are common, — "the bright 
egress of effulgent day" (p. 27), "the minor fly, chirurgeon keen, . . . The small phle- 
botomist" (p. 70), "the lunar orb renewed or at its hour Of plentitude arrived" (p. 
77), "the sportsman's tube, disglutted o'er the lake" (p. 100), "the lazy cloud . . . 
Lambent ... of the . . . hill" (p. no). The influence of Cowper is unmistakable in the 
descriptions of the winter evening at home (pp. 101-2) and the winter-morning walks 
(pp. 105-21). 



262 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

work are a deep love of nature, a keen eye for her less obvious beau- 
ties, and an enjoyment of the characteristic though unimportant 
sights about the farm which light up every page. Some idea of 
Hurdis's close observation of country Ufe, closer perhaps in this 
poem than in any that preceded it, may be gained from a few ex- 
tracts: 

Yet not devoid of pleasure is the field, 

Howe'er the gale may buflfet, nature still 

Some grateful objects yielding to the sight. 

Though brown the common with its withered fern, 

And sad the valley with its leafless wood, 

Yet crimson haws, and hips of ruddy hue, 

And cluster'd privet-berries, dark as jet, 

The cheerful hedgerow sprinkle. 

With folded feet inverted slumbers puss 
The livelong evening on the quilted hearth, 
Or warmer knee, caressed and often stroked. 

Now breaks, in vapour wrapt, the piercing dawn. 
Unusual light up>on the cieling thrown 
Wakes from its slumber the suspicious eye. 
And bids it look abroad on hill, and dale. 
Cottage, and steeple, in the niveous stole 
Of Winter trimly dressed. The silent shower, 
Precipitated still, no breeze disturbs, 
While fine as dust it falls.» 

This tendency to "number the streaks of the tulip, or describe 
the different shades in the verdure of the forest," which, according 
to Dr. Johnson and other classicists, is not "the business of a poet," ^ 
also distinguishes Hurdis's earlier work. The Village Curate, for 
example, has such touches as "the glossy raven . . . waddles"; "the 
fern Unclenching all her fingers"; the chimney-swallow's song 
" twitter 'd to young-eyed day"; "the tough and sinewy furze . . . 
With golden baskets hung"; "the sky-blue periwinkle climbs Up 
to the cottage eaves, and hides the . . . dairy lattice with a thousand 
eyes"; and the curate's joy in seeing "the little goldfinch pluck The 
groundsil's feather'd seed, and twit and twit." ^ 

Apparently few of these evidences of sharp eyes mark the descrip- 
tion of the country near London which William Fox, Jr., published 
in 1801 as La Bagatella, or Delineations of Home Scenery. The poem 
seems, however, to have the diflfuseness, the sentimentality, and the 

* Pages 96, 102, 1 1 2-13. ^ Rasselas, ch.x. 

' Pages 43-4, 40, 44, 38, 40, 44, and cf. 1 15-16. Southey had warm praise for 
Hurdis, but noted that even so early as 1827 his name was "little remembered" 
{Quart. Rev., xxxv. 201). 



DESCRIPTIVE POETRY: FOX — SOTHEBY 263 

conversational style of Hurdis and, fortunately, also his ability to 
draw pleasant and natural pictures of familiar scenes. This is one: 

The common grass here scents 
As pure as in the unfrequented vale. 
The gently rippling stream here runs as clear 
As other streams — the birds as sweetly sing 
As forest birds, where no one lists to hear. 
And this our homely well, and bubbling brook, 
Tho' never honour 'd yet by poet's song, 
To me more grateful flow than stranger riUs, 
Whose sides no friend hath trod.i 

Little poetic merit is discoverable in the forty pages of William 
Sotheby's Tour through Parts of Wales (1790), but its appreciation 
of the lonely mountain scenery of a country seldom mentioned by 
poets gives it some interest. The language is simple, but the style is 
that of the middle of the century: 

With rapture wild I gaze 
On the rude grandeur of the mountain view. . . . 
Tremendous Snowdon! while I gradual climb 
Thy craggy heights, though intermingled clouds 
Various of watery grey, and sable hue. 
Obscure the uncertain prospect, from thy brow 
His wildest views the mountain genius flings.^ 

Another dull work, interesting only for what it fails to do with an 
admirable subject, is John Bidlake's Sea (i 796) . Any appreciation of 

the beauty and mystery of the ships, 
And the magic of the sea, 

that Bidlake may have had is obscured by his wearisome, stereo- 
typed phraseology and grandiose, Thomsonian style; but it is doubt- 
ful if he or many of his contemporaries felt any such beauty and 
magic. Falconer expresses none of it in his Shipwreck, and it is very 
rare in any poetry written before Childe Harold. 

In the development of the powers of observation and expression 
which we have been following, it may have been noticed that the 
same poem rarely displays both excellences. Lochleven, Amwell, and 
Lewesdon Hill treat of Httle more than the broad, general aspects of 
nature, but describe these in pleasing verse, whereas Blackheath re- 
veals unusual knowledge of the country but no skill in expression. 
In the case of Hurdis the same phenomenon is illustrated in the dif- 

^ Crit. Rev., new arr., xxxv. 108. I have not seen the book. 

^ Edition of 1794, pp. 33-4. There are pleasant pictures of the obvious beauties of 
nature, conventionally expressed, in Sotheby's epic Saul (see below, p. 304, n. 2) 
and also in his sonnets. 



264 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

ferent works of a single author: the Village Curate is notable for its 
fluent, natural style rather than for the sharpness of its author's 
eyes, while the Favorite Village is unnatural in style but shows close 
observation. Another poem that possesses one of these qualities to 
an unusual degree but lacks the other is Thomas Gisborne's Walks 
in a Forest (1794). This work enjoyed considerable popularity in its 
day, going through eight editions in nineteen years; but it has been 
so completely forgotten by later generations that the copy in the 
Harvard Library lay for a hundred years uncut. "The scenes and 
incidents," the preface explains, "... are such . . . as occur in the 
Forests of Great Britain. The Author has endeavoured to delineate 
them with such a degree of particularity as might mark the char- 
acteristic features of each." This shows that Gisborne was not un- 
conscious of what he was doing, yet it is doubtful if he realized how 
significantly his poem differed from those that preceded it. In ex- 
teriors it is much the same, — stilted, grandiose, and unceasingly 
moralizing. As in the work of Thomson and his followers, historical, 
sentimental, and tragic episodes are inserted, together with descrip- 
tions of deserts, snow-storms, forest fires, and volcanic eruptions. 
These digressions, however, have little interest for the twentieth- 
century reader. What arrests his attention is the minute detail of 
the pictures and the appreciation of beauties which most men fail to 
see: touches that show the horse in winter, "on indurated balls Of 
snow upraised," with "quivering ears now forward bent. Now back- 
ward swiftly thrown"; the snow "tinging with thin-spread white the 
frozen brook"; the cows "breathing loud," as "with fastidious nose" 
they snuff at the frozen pool; "the marly cliff. Its base by oozing 
springs with frostwork glazed"; or a picture Uke this. 

With shrill and oft-repeated cry, 
Her angular course, alternate rise and fall, 
The woodpecker prolongs. » 

Such details and bits of unobstrusive beauty abound in the Walks 
as perhaps in no other English poem. Here is another of the numer- 
ous sketches of birds : 

Oft the heron, 
Posted in Dove's rich meads, with patient guile 
And pale grey plumes with watery blue suffused 
Stands Uke a shadow: then with out-strech'd neck, 
While near with sidelong gait the fowler creeps. 
Rises, and, steering to the distant fen, 
Shrieks from on high, and flaps her solemn wing.^ 

1 Walks, etc. (8th ed., 1813), pp. 114, 109, 146, 128, 13. ^ /j, g^_ 



DESCRIPTIVE POETRY: GISBORNE 265 

A rain-storm on a ridge of hills is thus described : 

The torrent rain 
Smokes on their deluged sides. The shower drives on : 
HiU after hill successive disappears 
Before the encroaching vapour. Lost awhile, 
They mingle with the sky: now far behind 
Gradual emerge, obscurely through the rear 
Of the spent storm discern'd: now gUmmer faint 
With watery beams; now through the freshen'd air 
Swell on the sight, and laugh in cloudless day.' 

These passages, which are as good as any in the Walks, show that 
Gisborne had sharp eyes and poetic feeling, but that he was not a 
poet. 

It is probable that the plan of the work — walks in a forest at 
different seasons of the year — was suggested by the "Winter Morn- 
ing Walk " and " Winter Walk at Noon " of The Task. Gisborne was 
a "most warm and Enthusiastic admirer" of Cowper,^ whom he 
praised highly in the Walks and made the subject of two odes;' yet, 
since what he particularly admired in the bard of Olney was the 
combination of the "faithful monitor's and poet's care," ^ the influ- 
ence was almost wholly on the didactic side. The two poets were 
really quite different. Gisborne's appreciation of the wild and rugged 
in nature was as far beyond Cowper's timid clinging to the fireside, 
to "trim gardens" and rolling meadows, as the delicate art of The 
Task was beyond the stilted turgidity of the Walks. The style and 
diction of the later poem certainly remind one of Thomson much 
more than of Cowper, no doubt because Gisborne was tempera- 
mentally incUned to the more formal and massive type of verse and 
wrote it more easily. There was probably some direct influence from 
Paradise Lost, four lines of which are quoted in the Walks ;^ but from 

' lb. 94-5- 

^ See Letters of Lady Hesketk to the Rev. John Johnson concerning Cowper (1901), 
under dates of April 21 and May 9, 1799. Lady Hesketh adds that Gisborne ranked 
Cowper's works "next to his Bible," and cherished them as his "pocket companions" 
and "bosom friends." 

' "To the Harp of Cowper" and "Ode to the Memory of Cowper," Walks, etc., 
201-8. 

* lb. 102. According to the preface, one of Gisborne's objects in writing the poem 
was "to inculcate . . . those moral truths, which the contemplation of the works of God 
in the natural world suggests." This may have had something to do with the Critical 
Review's praise (new arr., xvi. 42-5). 

' Pages 104-5, 153 ^- Gisborne has a number of unusual words that occur in Milton, 
— "ever-during," "sable- vested," "massy," "mazy," "sapient," "umbrageous," 
"lucid," "plumy," "nectarean," "ethereal," "empyreal," "empyrean," "refulgent," 
"horrent," "shag" (as a verb), "fabric" (a building), — as well as some phrases that 
probably came from him, "his radiant files" (p. 82, cf. P. L., iv. 797), "contiguous 



266 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

whatever sources Gisborne's Miltonisms were derived they are as 
unmistakable as they are omnipresent. 

It is a comforting reflection that most forgotten things deserve to 
be forgotten, a truth that holds in literature as in everything else, 
though, as the world never knew a large number of the volumes in 
print, it could not forget them. Yet occasionally one picks from the 
dust-heap of oblivion something that impresses one as a living book, 
something that one wishes the busy world could still find a little 
time for. Such a book, it seems to me, was written by the Scottish 
lawyer and minister, James Grahame. Vigor and richness are lack- 
ing, to be sure, and there is no lofty flight; but the poems are pleasant 
reading and reveal a knowledge and whole-hearted love of the rough 
Scottish country that few other writings of the time can equal. 
Grahame's first work. The Rural Calendar (1797), consists of twelve 
short descriptions, one for each month of the year. The pictures, 
though disconnected, are sympathetic and true and often contain 
unusual details; but the style is so colorless and the language in- 
clined to be so conventional and turgid that most readers will agree 
with the author's wife in thinking poorly of the work. Seven years 
later, in 1804, Grahame sprang into something like fame with his 
Sabbath, a poem of less than nine hundred lines breathing the peace 
and quiet, the love of God and nature, that one feels on a Sunday in 
rural Scotland.^ Religion rather than nature was Grahame's chief 
interest in The Sabbath, and it is the more obvious beauties of the 
country that he describes; yet he pictures these with a simple sin- 
cerity and affection that bring them home to us as earlier poetry 
does not. His sensitiveness to the sounds and silences of the country 
will be seen from such lines as these, 

The wheeling plover ceas'd 
Her plaint ; the solitary place was glad, 
And on the distant cairns, the watcher's ear 
Caught doubtfully at times the breeze-borne note; 

shade" (p. 84, cf. P. L., vi. 828), "tufted . . . woods" (p. 93, cf. Allegro, 78, Cotmis, 
225), "arrowy sleet" (p. 121, cf. "arrowy storm," p. 97, and P. R., iii. 324, but note 
Gray's Fatal Sisters, 3). He may also have been affected by the English Garden (1772- 
82) and some of the rimed poems of William Mason, on whom he wrote an elegy and an 
epitaph (Poems, 3d ed., 1803, pp. 139, 151). 

^ The Sabbath went through four editions within a year and in a few months was 
published in America. By 1821 it had reached a ninth edition, and by 1863 had been 
reprinted at least six times more. Byron's sneer {English Bards, 319-26, 924) counts 
for little in view of Scott's praise (Lockhart's Scott, 1900, i. 389), and of Southey's re- 
mark that The Sabbath "had found its way from one end of Great Britain to the other; 
— it was in the mouths of the young, and in the hearts of the aged" {Quart. Rev., 1810, 
iii. 457). In 1816 "Professor" Wilson published some "Lines" to the "author of The 
Sabbath" {Poetical Works, 1874, pp. 410-18). 



DESCRIPTIVE POETRY: GRAHAME 267 

or these, 

Far in moors, remote from house or hut . . . 
Where ev'n the hum of wand'ring bee ne'er breaks 
The quiet slumber of the level waste; ^ 

or these from the opening of the poem, 

How still the morning of the hallow 'd day! 
Mute is the voice of rural labour, hush'd 
The ploughboy's whistle, and the milkmaid's song. 
The scythe lies glitt'ring in the dewy wreath 
Of tedded grass, mingled with fading flowers. 
That yester-morn bloom'd waving in the breeze: 
Sounds the most faint attract the ear, — the hum 
Of early bee, the trickling of the dew, 
The distant bleating, midway up the hill. 

More unusual is the picture of the partridge with her young: 

Close nestling 'neath her breast 
They cherish'd cow'r amid the purple blooms.* 

To the second edition of The Sabbath Grahame added four brief 
"Sabbath Walks," which suggest Thomson in that there is one for 
each of the seasons. They are similar to their predecessor and, like 
it, give evidence not only of sharp eyes and keen ears but of some 
powers of imagination and expression. The title Sabbath Walks re- 
calls Gisborne's Walks in a Forest, which Grahame presumably had 
read; yet aU his verse is closer to that of Hurdis than to other un- 
rimed descriptions. 

Grahame 's piety, which is apparent in everything he wrote, com- 
pletely dominates the short accounts of Bible scenes — esthetically 
of slight value — which he published in 1806 as Biblical Pictures. 
The same year, however, he took a long step forward in his Birds of 
Scotland, the most significant and to me the most enjoyable of his 
poems. It is ahnost a treatise on ornithology, and as such belongs 
in a way with the Sugar-Cane and the H op-Garden. But Grahame 's 
purpose was different from Grainger's and Booker's; for in the 
preface he explained, "I have studied not so much to convey knowl- 
edge, as to please the imagination, and warm the heart," words 
which mark their author as belonging to the new century. The poem 
contains a good deal of information regarding the haunts and habits 
of Scottish birds, their food, the materials, form, and location of 
their nests, the number and color of their eggs, and so on; but, in- 
stead of being the labored, pedantic work that it would probably 
have proved had it been written thirty years earlier, it is fresh, 

1 First American ed. (N. Y., 1805), pp. 17-18, 22. * lb. 18. 



268 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

sincere, and poetic. It takes us away from the gardens where "Phil- 
omel pours her plaint," away from the rolling meadows and culti- 
vated fields in which the English *'Muse" had so long wandered, to 
*'the thorny dingle," the "bosky cleugh," "the blooming vetchy 
ridge," to the "whinny braes . . . garlanded with gold" and the 
brook "wimpling through hazelly shaw, and broomy glen." ^ For 
perhaps the first time in English poetry we watch a real lark as he 
sings his " downward- veering song" to his mate: 

Slow the descent at first, then, by degrees, 
Quick, and more quick, till suddenly the note 
Ceases; and, like an arrow- fledge, he darts. 
And, softly lighting, perches by her side.'' 

In the ideal country-place of which Grahame dreams he wants "no 
gravelled paths, pared from the smooth-shaved turf," such as Cow- 
per loved, but "the simple unmade road."' The temptation to 
quote extensively from the Birds of Scotland is strong, but one more 
passage must suffice, one that seems to me to catch something of the 
dewy freshness of the Scottish wilds: 

With earliest spring, while yet in mountain cleughs 
Lingers the frozen wreath, when yeanling Iambs, 
Upon the little heath-encircled patch 
Of smoothest sward, totter, — the gorcock's call 
Is heard from out the mist, high on the hill; 
But not till when the tiny heather bud 
Appears, are struck the spring-time leagues of love. 
Remote from shepherd's hut, or trampled fold, 
The new joined pair their lowly mansion pitch, 
Perhaps beneath the juniper's rough shoots; 
Or castled on some plat of tufted heath, 
Surrounded by a narrow sable moat 
Of swampy moss.* 

Grahame could never write long without touching on the cruelty 
of hunting, of robbing nests and imprisoning song-birds, or on the 
horrors of child-labor, the press-gang, or slavery. His interest in this 
last evil led him to join with James Montgomery and EHzabeth Ben- 
ger in a volume of Poems on the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1809) ; ^ 

^ Birds, etc. (Edin., 1806), pp. 20, 60 (of. 20), 26, 43, 22. ^ lb. 4. 

3 Ih. 60 (of. The Task, i. 351-2). * lb. 13-14. 

* The African slave-trade, which was discussed in Parliament from 1788 to 1807, 
when it was abolished, is the subject of at least four other blank- verse poems of length 
that I have not seen: Mrs. Ann Yearsley's 0» the Inhumanity of the Slave-Trade (1788); 
John Jamieson's Sorrows of Slavery, containing a Faithful Statement of Facts respecting 
the African Slave Trade (1789); the anonymous Address to every Briton on the Slave 
Trade, being an effectual Plan to abolish this Disgrace to our Country (1791); and "an 



DESCRIPTIVE POETRY: GRAHAME 269 

but his contribution, Africa Delivered, is naturally enough senti- 
mental and unimpressive, since it deals with a subject unsuited to 
his quiet, descriptive talents and one about which he could have 
known little at first hand. In his longest poem, British Georgics 
(1809), he returns to his own heath and to the one subject that in- 
spired him, nature; yet, since his primary object is not to describe 
the country but to furnish suggestions about agriculture for gentle- 
men farmers, much of the work belongs with the technical treatises 
that are to be considered later. The pictures of wild nature in which 
Grahame excels are rare, but the many incidental descriptions, 
though disfigured by wretched poetic diction, reveal his keen obser- 
vation and love of the country, and the best of them have the quiet 
charm of The Sabbath: 

No more at dewy dawn, or setting sun, 
The blackbird's song floats mellow down the dale; 
Mute is the lark, or soars a shorter flight. 
With carol briefly trilled, and soon descends. ' 

The Georgics is in every respect more tame, formal, and unoriginal 
than the earlier pieces, perhaps because Grahame was here for 
the first time making use of a conventional Hterary form and thus 
was to some extent consciously modelhng his work on that of others. 
For the British Georgics owes not only its name but its purpose and 
method to the Georgics of Virgil, and probably derives something 
from English works of the same kind — Cyder, Agriculture, the Hop- 
Garden, and the Sugar-Cane. It is also under no small debt, which 
Grahame did not attempt to conceal,^ to the father of blank-verse 
descriptive poetry. The influence of The Seasons is shown princi- 
pally in a greater formahty of style and a tendency to grandiose 

Under Graduate's" Dictates of Indignation (1791). To judge from the reviews, the first 
is emotional and declamatory, the second is based on the reports of investigators and is 
free from exaggeration, the third is an enthusiastic, highly-colored invective, and the 
fourth is romantic, sentimental heroics. The second and fourth are clearly Miltonic, 
as is the vague, rhetorical, and inflated Wrongs of Africa which William Roscoe (the 
biographer of Lorenzo de' Medici and the subject of a paper in the Sketch Book) pub- 
lished in 1787-88. 

^ Page 129. The poem is divided into twelve parts, one for each month; it treats 
chiefly of "Scottish husbandry, scenery, and manners" (p. v). 

* Five of the twelve quotations prefixed to the several "Georgics" he took from 
The Seasons, and in the preface he wrote: "That I have been preceded by Thomson, 
is a consideration of a more serious kind. He, no doubt, with a genius and feUcity 
which none of his followers need ever hope to equal, has described many of the most 
striking appearances of Nature, and many of the most poetical processes, so to speak, 
of husbandry. But though he has reaped, why may not others be permitted to glean? " 
Coming so late as 1809, after most of Wordsworth's significant work was done, this 
remark is an impressive tribute to Thomson's popularity. 



270 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

diction. Expressions like "such flights to hinder, nought conduces 
more," "hyacinthine rods Enwreathed with azure bells," "each 
gaudy chaliced bloom," "surpassing far the medicated cup," ^ sound 
more like 1726 than 1809. It is probably from Thomson, also, that 
Grahame took the unusual compound epithets which are sprinkled 
copiously through his last three volumes.^ Along with such com- 
pounds, the absurd periphrases that deface The Seasons find their 
way not only into the British Georgics but into the genuinely poetic 
passages of the Birds of Scotland. To the words "powder," "gun," 
and "shot " Grahame seems to have had a real aversion, using in- 
stead "the explosive grain," "the murderous tube," "the two-fold 
tube, formed for a double death," "the leaden viewless shower, 
Vollied from flashing tube," and "the leaden bolt. Slung from the 
mimic lightning's nitrous wing." ^ 

The induence of Milton on Grahame's work may be inferred from 
what has been said of the several pieces. In the nature passages and 
in the earlier, simpler poems — the Rural Calendar, The Sabbath, 
and Sabbath Walks — there is little, often nothing, to remind one 
of Paradise Lost, although The Sabbath does contain such expressions 
as "in peace they home resort," "be pictur'd bright To latest times," 
"had pow'rless struck Th' infatuate monarch ";"* and the Rural 
Calendar opens with the lines, 

Long ere the snow-veiled dawn, the bird of morn 
His wings quick claps, and sounds his cheering call. 

The later works, however, which are more formal in manner, recall 
Milton clearly though never strongly. Even the descriptive parts 
often show his influence: 

Long ere the wintry gusts, with chilly sweep, 

Sigh through the leafless groves, the swallow tribes, 

Heaven-warned, in airy bevies congregate, 

Or clustering sit, as if in deep consult 

What time to launch; but, lingering, they wait, 

Until the feeble of the latest broods 

Have gathered strength, the sea-ward path to brave. 

^ Pages 133, 134, 135, 141. Similar expressions which recall Thomson and his 
followers are to be found in the Birds of Scotland and Africa Delivered. In the former, 
for example, we have "clinging supine, to deal the air-gleaned food" (p. 65), and "single 
drops, Prelusive of the shower" (p. 66). 

* Here are five that occur within twelve lines, — "cassia-perfumed," "deep-logged," 
"stern-emblazoned," "carnage-freighted," "ocean-buried" {Birds of Scotland, p. 80). 

5 British Georgics, p. 159; Rural Calendar (September); Birds of Scotland, pp. 12, 
40, 84. 

* Pages IS, 17. 



1 



DESCRIPTIVE POETRY: GRAHAME 27 1 

Amid November's gloom, a morn serene 
Will sometimes intervene, o'er cottage roof. 
And grassy blade, spreading the hoarfrost bright, 
That crackles crisp when marked by early foot.' 

Although the unusual compound epithets, the grandiose diction 
into which, as we have seen, Grahame occasionally slipped, and the 
parenthetical expressions of which he is fond were of course derived 
ultimately from Paradise Lost, he may have adopted them uncon- 
sciously from other eighteenth-century poets. For, though he bor- 
rowed several of Milton's very phrases,^ it is doubtful if he was 
directly influenced by him to any appreciable extent. 

We have now followed the long blank- verse descriptive poem from 
its birth in Cyder and The Seasons through the first decade of the 
nineteenth century.^ Here, singularly enough, it disappears. No 
important long poem, rimed or unrimed, the main purpose of which 
is to describe nature, seems to have been published since 1810. 
Scattered survivals there undoubtedly are, like the few green leaves 
that may struggle from the trunk of an old tree; but these do not 
indicate any real vitality. The type is dead, or rather it has been 
absorbed into other types and broken up into shorter poems. Words- 
worth's verse illustrates the change; for, while it includes many son- 
nets and other short pieces that picture the out-of-doors, and while 

^ Birds of Scotland, p. 67; British Georgics, p. 213. 

"^ For example, "the . . . plough-boy singing, blythe" {Rural Calendar, March, of. 
Allegro, 63-5); "from morn to dewy eve" {Birds of Scotland, p. 65, cf. P. L.,i. 742-3); 
"bloomy sprays" {Sabbath, p. 27, cf. sonnet to the nightingale, line i). 

' Five other descriptive pieces that I have seen should be mentioned, although they 
make little or no attempt to picture the out-of-doors: E. Cooper's Bewdley (i7S9j a 
rambling, tedious piece concerned chiefly with "the harmless, charming fair," which 
borrows several phrases from Milton), Charles Dunster's St. James's Street (1790). 
Charies Lucas's Old Serpentine Temple of the Druids (i79S), R- C. Dallas's Kirkstall 
A bbey ( 1 79 7) , and William HoUoway's Scenes of Youth ( 1 803) . There is also considera- 
able description (usually of obvious beauties expressed in stilted language) in blank- 
verse poems that will be considered in subsequent chapters, — for example, in Blair s 
Grave (1743), J. G. Cooper's Power of Harmony (1745), and James Foot's Penseroso 
(1771), which are noticed below under Philosophical Poetry. A number of later pieces 
of some length in Miltonic blank verse I have passed over, because, as they seeni to be 
dull, conventional, and without a strong love of nature, they apparently contributed 
nothing to the development of descriptive poetry, but knowing them only from re- 
views I may not do them justice: an anonymous Ride and Walk through Stourhead 
(1779); "Mr." Robinson's Prize of Venus, or Killarney Lake (1786); William Green- 
wood's Poem written durijtg a Shooting Excursion on the Moors (1787) ; the anonymous 
Address to Loch Lomond (1788, perhaps by James Cririe) and Morning Walk (1792); 
Thomas Cole's Life of Hubert (i79S-7,"a narrative, descriptive, and didactic poem"); 
John Jackson's Gils-land Wells (1797); Brian Broughton's Six Picturesque Views in 
North Wales (1801) ; James Cririe's Scottish Scenery (1803). For the reviews in which 
they are noticed, see Bibliography I, under the several dates. 



272 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

there are many descriptive passages in The Prelude and The Excur- 
sion, the main purpose of all his longer works is philosophical. Two 
of the earliest pieces, it is true, the Evening Walk and Descriptive 
Sketches, belong, except that they are in rime, to the class we have 
been considering; but it is significant of the changing order that 
none of the mature poems do. 

The form had served its purpose and there is no reason to regret 
its passing. Admirable as was much of the descriptive verse, a long 
poem cannot be made up entirely of pictures of nature, and the epi- 
sodes, morahzings, and accounts of famous persons and places with 
which Thomson and his successors diversified their works are hardly 
successful. In previous and subsequent poetry descriptions are in- 
troduced incidentally, or, better still, as with Wordsworth and 
Hardy, are made an integral part of a narrative or philosophical 
work. The inevitable formlessness and digressiveness of the long 
nature poem brought it into disrepute among more critical readers.^ 
Pope sneered at his own early work, in which "pure Description 
held the place of Sense," and, like many of his contemporaries, seems 
to have regarded pictures of the country as purely decorative, for he 
thought a poem made up of them "as absurd as a feast made up of 
sauces." ^ The Monthly Review held that this kind of verse "is 
doubtless inferior, both in dignity and utility, to ethic compositions," 
and questioned whether it were not " in itself a bad speciesof poetry." 
"More descriptive poetry!" it exclaimed on the appearance of 
Wordsworth's second volume, "Have we not yet enough? Must 
eternal changes be rung on uplands and lowlands, and nodding 
forests, and brooding clouds, and cells, and dells, and dingles?"^ 
Yet there can be no doubt as to the popularity of most pieces of the 
class. "The cultivators of the higher species of the poetic art," de- 
clared the Critical Review, "must be contented with the applause of 
the learned and discerning few : but the poet who pourtrays the ap- 
pearances of nature . . . provides a feast for the public, and will not 
fail to obtain the reward to which he is entitled. — Hence, while the 

1 These qualities, together with the inflated language and contorted style of many 
poems of the class, are amusingly parodied in Samuel Wesley's piece, The Descriptive, 
a Miltonick, after the Manner of the Moderns {Poems, 1736, pp. 151-6). 

2 See Joseph Warton's edition of Pope (1797), iv. 22 n. 

3 xviii. 278 (1758); enl. ed., xii. 166, 216-17 (i793)- In 1798 it referred to "the ill 
success of most adventurers in this province of poetry" (enl. ed., xxvii. 106), while 
twelve years earlier it had remarked, "In poems merely descriptive, it requires no 
common command of language, as well as strength of fancy, to support the simple 
majesty of blank verse, as many unsuccessful attempts have sufl&ciently proved" 
(Ixxiv. 70). Chalmers in 1810 {English Poets, xvii. 451) thought Scott's Amwell "liable 
to all the objections attached to descriptive poetry." 



DESCRIPTIVE POETRY: THOMSON — CO WPER 273 

odes of Gray are read by few and relished by fewer still, the Seasons 
of Thomson are in the hands of every one." ^ 

What light, we may well ask before leaving the subject, does this 
survey of unrimed descriptive verse throw upon the work of the 
greater men who wrote it, Thomson, Cowper, and Wordsworth? 
As to Thomson there can be no question. Not only is The Seasons 
the first extensive picture of the out-of-doors, but until the publica- 
tion of The Task it dominated poetry of the kind no less in style and 
diction than in plan and in the aspects of nature presented, and even 
in Wordsworth's day its influence was still considerable. 

With Cowper the case is different. He was not so much an inno- 
vator as a perfecter. He did not begin things, but encouraged them 
in a direction they were already taking. It is doubtful if the 
course of English literature would have been noticeably different if 
he had never written; at the most he but strengthened tendencies 
already started. His work is largely didactic and religious, like that 
of his contemporaries; and, like most of them, he seldom loses sight 
of a house and never strays from the peaceful, cultivated country to 
the wild moors or the lonely mountain lakes. In observation, and 
in drawing finely detailed pictures of actual scenes, Cowper made no 
notable advance. It is his humor, taste, and sensitiveness, his deli- 
cate, deft art, that make The Task what it is; and these his admirers 
rarely caught. Yet he undoubtedly was a strong force in the develop- 
ment of simple, fluent expression, and by strengthening the tenden- 
cies of men like Hurdis and Grahame in the same direction he 
probably helped prepare the way for Michael and Tintern A bbey. 

Wordsworth's greatness becomes more apparent when his work is 
compared with that of his predecessors, for it is then seen to be as 
important historically as it is esthetically. He was not the first, to 
be sure, to make nature the center of the picture; that had been done 
in the Walks in a Forest, the Birds of Scotland, and some other poems; 
and, so far as closeness of observation and the use of details go, 
he really falls behind Gisborne and Grahame.^ But with Wordsworth 

' New arrangement, xxxi. 83 (1801). 

2 It is commonly supposed that Wordsworth, if he did not actually discover the 
English lakes, was at least practically the first to make them known to literature. 
Miss Reynolds, in her Treatment of Nature in English Poetry, has discussed the poems 
of Brown and Dalton, as well as the prose of Amory, Arthur Young, Gray, Gilpin, 
Hutchinson, and others who deal with the region, and may have thought it unnecessary 
to mention the numerous more obscure works of the same kind that were published 
before 1800. Yet few of us realize that so early as 1792 the public had "reason to be 
almost sated" with "those admired lakes" {Crit. Rev., new arr., vi. 545), that the trip 
through them was " the fashionable tour of the times" {Mo. Rev., enl. ed., xii. 342-3), 
and that even in noticing Wordsworth's Evening Walk the Critical Review (new arr., 



274 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

there is something greater than details, something that lies behind 
them, that is perceived not with the eyes but with the imagination, 
something that is, so far as poetry is concerned, the very heart of 
nature. It is the depth of his insight into this inner spirit, the inten- 
sity with which he felt its power, that is the new and invaluable el- 
ement in his poetry. His landscapes are no more real than those of 
his predecessors, but they are flooded with a new light, 

The light that never was, on sea or land, 
The consecration, and the Poet's dream. 

He dwelt upon aspects of nature unmentioned in earlier poetry, on 

The silence that is in the starry sky, 
The sleep that is among the lonely hills. 

Again, eighteenth-century writers, however beautiful and interest- 
ing they found the out-of-doors, thought of it not as closely related 
to man but as a thing apart. To Wordsworth the two seemed vitally 
connected : 

One impulse from a vernal wood 

May teach you more of man, 

Of moral evil and of good, 

Than all the sages can. 

"The round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky," spoke to 
him not of God alone but of man; he heard in them "the still, sad 
music of humanity." Shaftesbury, Akenside, and the other deists 
had realized the spiritual ministry that nature may perform, but 
with them it was largely an intellectual perception that played a 
small part in their lives and was by no means the center of interest 
in their work. Wordsworth, on the other hand, exemplified it in his 
life and insisted upon it in his poetry to an extent undreamed of by 
previous writers. Indeed, he went farther than all but a very few 
have cared to follow him. "Therefore am I still," he wrote, in words 
so familiar that their full meaning is apt to be overlooked, 

well pleased to recognise 
In nature and the language of the sense, 
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, 
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 
Of all my moral being. 

viii. 347) remarked, "Our northern lakes have of late years attracted the attention of 
the public in a variety of ways. They have been visited by the idle, described by the 
curious, and delineated by the artist." Richard Cumberland's Ode to the Sun {Odes, 
1776, with an important preface), the anonymous Ode to the Genius of the Lakes in the 
North of England (1781, see Crit. Rev., Hi. 234), Joseph Budworth's Windermere (1798), 
and Wilham Taylor's Topographical Ode (Southey's Annual Anthology, 1799, i. 1-9) 
all deal with the region. 



DESCRIPTIVE POETRY: WORDSWORTH 275 

It is these things, and not any supposed beginnings of romanticism 
or of nature poetry, that make Wordsworth's part in the Lyrical 
Ballads, aside from its esthetic value, a memorable contribution to 
English literature. 



CHAPTER XIII 

EPIC AND BURLESQUE POETRY 

The Epic 

"A CORRESPONDENT wrotc US lately," declared the Edinburgh Re- 
view in 1808, "an account of a tea-drinking in the west of England, 
at which there assisted no fewer than six epic poets — a host of Par- 
nassian strength, certainly equal to six-and-thirty ordinary bards." ^ 
Although this noteworthy encounter took place in the days of 
Wordsworth and Coleridge, there must have been similar occasions 
attended by quite as many rivals of Homer and Virgil when Queen 
Anne 'sometimes counsel took and sometimes tea,' or when Cowper 
and Johnson were votaries of "the bubbling and loud hissing urn." 
For the epic ferment was unusually active in the eighteenth cen- 
tury. From 1695 to 1723, it will be remembered, Blackmore was 
pouring out 

Heroic poems without number, 

Long, lifeless, leaden, lulling lumber; ^ 

and Pope's earliest and latest works were epics. The impulse to- 
wards heroic poetry seems to have grown rather than abated as the 
century advanced. 

Oft do I burn to snatch the Epic Lyre, 

declared H. F. Cary in 1788 ; and, though his ambition was dampened 
by his less than sixteen years, he urged his friend the Swan of Lich- 
field to "proceed, the Epic wire Awake." ^ "By the sacred energies 
of Milton," Lamb wrote to Coleridge, "... I adjure you to attempt 
the Epic." ^ "Young poets," said Southey, "are, or at least used to 
be, as ambitious of producing an epic poem, as stage-stricken youths 
of figuring in Romeo or Hamlet. It had been the earliest of my day- 
dreams. I had begun many such." ^ 

' xi. 362. ^ See p. 90 above. ' Sonnets and Odes (1788), 33, 9. 

^ Jan. 10, 1797. Further evidences of the interest in this kind of writing are seen in 
Voltaire's Essay on Epic Poetry (1727, with RoUi's Remarks upon it, 1728) and his epic 
La Henriade (1723, with John Lockman's translation of it into blank verse, 1732), and 
William Hayley's rimed Essay on Epic Poetry (1782, "in five epistles" with elaborate 
notes). 

' Preface to the 1837 edition of /oano/^ re (Works, 1837, vol. i. p. xvii); see also his 
Life and Correspondence (1849), i. 118-19. Southey completed Joan when he was only 
nineteen; Pope began an epic called Alcander when he was thirteen, and James Mont- 
gomery one on Alfred when he was two years older; Glover published nine books of his 

276 



EPIC POETRY 277 

Although most of these juvenile efforts were never completed, or 
if finished were never published, so many of them did get into print 
that the Monthly Review declared in 1802, "Epic poems are become 
'as plenty as blackberries ' "; ^ and the young Byron exclaimed, 

Another Epic! Who inflicts again 

More books of blank upon the sons of men? ^ 

If these ambitious attempts had been warranted by considerable 
success in verse, or by evidences of unusual powers of poetical narra- 
tion on the part of their authors, there would be less cause to wonder 
at their number; but as a rule they appear to have sprung only from 
the wish to join the ranks of the ''bright celestial choir Of bards " by 
writing 

such potent lays 
As may the wide world fill with dumb amaze.^ 

Not that any of them succeeded in amazing the world ; for we are 
told that they seldom lived longer "than the constitution of a re- 
public, or the celebrity of a German drama," ^ and it is certain that 
few eighteenth-century IHads reached a second edition, and that 
only one. Glover's Leonidas, was really popular.^ 

Epic-writing was not, however, an isolated phenomenon; it was an 
expression of that love of the heroic — of mouth-filHng words, long 
speeches, and noble sentiments, of self-conscious but incredibly 
brave princes — which struts through the tragedy of the time. If 
even in that day such things did not attract readers, no wonder they 
now appear as absurd as drum-majors and showy uniforms in real 
war, no wonder they have been relegated to the melodrama, to the 
speeches of demagogues, and to Fourth-of-July orations. The epic 
seems to us, as indeed it did to Horace Walpole,^ to belong, with the 

Leonidas at the age of twenty-five; Sir William Jones was twenty- three when he formed 
the "design" and composed at least part of Britain Discovered, "an heroic poem in 
twelve books"; Richard Cumberland wrote part of an epic on India soon after he left 
college, and Landor composed the Phocaeans while at college; Henry Milman began 
Sainor at Eton and nearly finished it before leaving Oxford; Macaulay wrote three 
cantos of Olaus the Great when he was only eight years old, and parts of at least 
three more epic poems before he was fourteen; and John Fitchett cannot have been 
much over twenty when he began his lifelong struggle with King Alfred. 

^ Enlarged ed. , xxxvii. 359. 2 English Bards, 2,^$-(>. 

^ Gary, Sonnets, etc. (1788), 33. 

* Mo. Rev., enl. ed., xxxvii. 359 (1802). The year previous the Critical Review, after 
a long discussion of Ogilvie's epic, concluded somewhat wearily (new arr., xxxii. 403), 
"It is saying Uttle to add, that the Britannia is not inferior to any one of the numerous 
works of the same class which have lately made their appearance." 

* The indifference of the public may also be deduced from the number of epic poems 
that were pubhshed in part but never completed. 

* See his letter to WiUiam Mason, June 25, 1782. 



278 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 



popular ballad and the chronicle play, to the past. Keats and Arnold 
are the only notable English poets of the last century who attempted 
it, and Hyperion remained but a fragment and Sohrab and Rustum 
but an episode. The chief heroic story of the British, in which Milton 
saw diYiotYiei A eneid, became in Victorian hands the Idylls of the King, 
and one that suggests the Odyssey emerged from even the saga- 
loving mind of William Morris as the Earthly Paradise. 

On one point we should probably agree with the writers of eight- 
eenth-century epics, that if there is to be heroic poetry the proper 
vehicle for it is blank verse. ^ There were several reasons for the 
prevalence of such an opinion in the days of Thomson and Cowper, — 
the difficulty of writing a long work in heroic couplets, the monotony 
of it when written, the examples of Homer and Virgil, which carried 
great weight, and that of Milton, which in this instance probably 
carried even greater. For, as we have seen, by 1 730 it was commonly 
agreed that Paradise Lost was the greatest epic in any modern lan- 
guage and for loftiness and grandeur the supreme English work. 
The matter of grandeur was of no small importance, inasmuch as 
poets accepted the epic conventions and, worrying very little about 
naturalness of expression, sought for the sublime. In order to do 
this they frankly copied Milton's style, diction, and at times even 
his "machinery," with the result that in no other field was his influ- 
ence so marked and in no other was it of so little value. 

Since these epics did not appeal to the reading public but re- 
mained exotics fostered only by the ambitions of poets, and since 
they had sUght influence on one another, they show little develop- 
ment. To be sure, those composed after 1800 are usually free from 
many of the vices which disfigure those written a hundred years 

1 The following rimed epics (of which only the Epigoniad is of any importance) are 
all I have noticed: Edward Howard's Caroloiades, or the Rebellion of Forty One (1689); 
Richard Blackmore's Prince Arthur (1695), King Arthur (1697), Eliza (1705), and 
Alfred (1723); Thomas Ken's Edmund and Hymnotheo (written before 1711); John 
Henley's Esther (1714); Aaron Hill's Gideon (c. 1716-49) and Fanciad (1743); an 
anonymous Britannia, a Poem of the Epic Kind (Canterbury, 1723; not seen, may be in 
blank verse); John Harvey's Life of Robert Bruce (Edin., 1729, reprinted as The 
Bruciad, 1769); William Wilkie's Epigoniad (Edin., 1757); George Cockings's War 
(1760), Paoliad (1769), and American War (1781); James Ogden's British Lion Rous'd 
(1762), Revolution (1790), and Emanuel, or Paradise Regained (Manchester, 1797; not 
seen, may be in blank verse) ; Hannah Cowley's Siege of Acre (1799) ; Sir James Bland 
Burges's Richard the First (1801); H. J. Pye's Alfred (1801); W. H. Drummond's 
Battle of Trafalgar (Belfast, 1806), and Thomas Adams's poem with the same title 
{Poetical Works, Alnwick, 1811, pp. 14-114); Joseph Cottle's Messiah (1815). The 
American epics, Timothy Dwight's Conquest of Canaan (Hartford, 1785) and Joel 
Barlow's Columbiad (Hartford, 1787), are worth noting. Washington, or Liberty Re- 
stored (1809), by Thomas Northmore, also an American, follows Milton in verse, style, 
phrasing, and "machinery." 



1 

Id I 
=d I 



EPIC POETRY 279 

earlier, they exhibit better taste and a better understanding of 
blank verse; but anything approaching epic power is still as much to 
seek as in Blackmore's days. The later pieces are more readable, 
but, except for those of Southey, Landor, and Keats, there is no 
more reason for their being read. The earlier efforts, it has been said, 
constitute "the most desolate region of English poetry, a dreary ^No 
man's land,' forbidding desert, without sign of human occupation or 
interest . . . through which few, if any, living travellers have ever 
forced their way." ^ And it must be owned that eighteenth-century 
epics do not possess the interest many duller works have by vir- 
tue of deaHng with the times in which their authors lived, and that 
they rarely entice the reader to continue to the end or leave any defi- 
nite impression on his mind. The truth is that, with the possible ex- 
ception of Southey's Modoc and Roderick, even the best want that 
quality indispensable in an epic but usually lacking in all English 
poetry, narrative power. They are largely given over to speeches, 
soliloquies, descriptions, and comments; they are without action, 
their story never hurries one along, and their men and women are 
lifeless t)^es. As Walpole said, "Epic poetry is the art of being as 
long as possible in telling an uninteresting story." ^ 

What makes the poems tiresome is in part the lack of suppleness 
and swiftness in the blank verse of the period, which had not yet 
been made a good narrative medium, and in part the desire to be 
impressive, which led writers to stiffen their style with inversions and 
other Miltonisms until rapid movement was impossible; but to a 
considerable extent it is because men who possessed any power of 
sustained narration were then turning to the newest, most popular, 
and most remunerative of literary forms, the novel. Indeed, it may 
be urged with considerable justice that Tom Jones is a truer epic 
than any of its ponderous verse-contemporaries that claimed the 
title. Only after a course of penitential reading in the narrative 
poems of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries can the Lay 
of the Last Minstrel and Marmion, The Giaour and Mazeppa, be ap- 
preciated and their immediate and remarkable vogue be understood. 
They are, of course, romances not epics, and they have many obvious 
faults; but they are unquestionably good stories, swift, vivid, well 
told, and full of movement, which is more than can be said of their 
predecessors for a century preceding. Gebir and Hyperion atone as 
poems for what they lack as stories; but the eighteenth-century 
epic-writers were neither story-tellers nor poets, and for such there 

^ W. M. Dixon, English Epic and Heroic Poetry (1912), 241. 
^ Letter to Mason, June 25, 1782. 



28o THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

is no hope. There was but one thing for them to do, — laboriously 
to copy Homer, Virgil, and Milton, employing the plan and many of 
the details of the Greek or the Roman writer and the language and 
style of the EngHsh one, together with a goodly number of the long 
similes and classical allusions with which all three abound. In the 
matter of "machinery" they found Pope's advice useful, "If you 
have need of devils, draw them out of Milton's Paradise." ^ 

Milton's influence on heroic poetry was first seen in the works 
that have already been noticed, — the rimed productions of Black- 
more, such quasi-rehgious epics as the anonymous Prae-existence 
(17 14) and Last Day {c. 1720) or Thomas Newcomb's Last Judg- 
ment of Men and Angels (1723), and the poems on the battles of 
Blenheim and RamilUes.^ A little later James Ralph, who had sailed 
from America in the company of Benjamin Franklin, published his 
Zeuma, or the Love of Liberty (1729), the story of a king of Chili who 
dies resisting the Spanish invaders. For this romantic and grandiose 
picture of a noble savage passionately devoted to freedom and to his 
sweetheart, Ralph used a more Miltonic style, diction, and kind of 
versification than he had employed in his earlier blank verse. These 
lines are typical : 

At first the Hero gave unbounded loose 
To anger and revenge; then, calmly sad, 
His fury ebb'd in silent tears away; 
Strait, prompted by despair, he rav'd anew.' 

Zeuma is too romantic and too brief to be termed an epic. The 
first unrimed poem after Paradise Lost which can lay any claim to 
that title is the only one that ever enjoyed any real popularity, 
Richard Glover's Leonidas (1737). This work reached a fourth 
edition within two years, and even after 1800 was three times re- 
printed, once in America;* it was immediately translated into 
French, while in Germany it had considerable vogue and no little 
influence. Lyttelton devoted an issue of Common Sense to its 

* Art of Sinking in Poetry, ch. xv {Works, Elwin-Courthope ed., x. 403). 
''■ See pp. 90-95, 97, loi n. 2, 109-11, above. 

* Page 47. For Ralph's other Miltonic blank verse, see p. 239 above. 

* No editions were published in London between 1739 and 1798, except the en- 
larged one that Glover brought out in 1770, which, though reprinted at Dublin two 
years later, seems to have attracted little attention. It is hard to understand how it 
came to be reissued in 1804, 1810, and 181 4, since the references to the poem show that 
the first enthusiasm had soon waned (see, e. g., Europ. Mag., 1786, ix. 2, 4; Mo. Rev., 
1788, Ixxix. 515, and enl. ed., 1797, xxiv. 455; Chalmers, English Poets, 1810, xvii. 
9-10; Boaden's Memoirs of Kemble, 1825, i. 303). Within ten years of its publication, 
indeed, Horace Walpole wrote (to H. S. Conway, Oct. 24, 1746) that Leonidas was 
already forgotten. 



EPIC POETRY: RALPH — GLOVER 28 1 

praise, as "one of those few [poems] of distinguish'd Worth and Ex- 
cellence, which will be handed down with Respect to all Posterity, 
and which, in the long Revolution of past Centuries, but two or three 
Countries have been able to produce " ; ^ Matthew Green, in his witty 
poem The Spleen (1737), gave more than twenty lines to Glover, — 

But there's a youth, that you can name. 
Who needs no leading-strings to fame, 
Whose quick maturity of brain 
The birth of Pallas may explain . . . ;^ 

and William Thompson declared in a poem To the Author of Leonidas, 

Promiscuous Beauties dignify thy Breast, 

By Nature happy, as by Study blest, 

Thou, Wit's Columbus! from the Epick-Throne 

New Worlds descry'd, and made Them all our own. ^ 

Yet the thirty books of the "stupendous and terrible" Athenaid 
(1787), in which Glover sought to repeat his success by continuing 
the story of the Persian invasion to its end, seem to have been an 
utter failure.'' To be sure, no one in recent years has become suffi- 
ciently interested in either work to determine whether Leonidas is 
really superior to its sequel; but at least it is shorter (there were only 
nine books until 1770, when three more were added), it had the 
advantage of coming fifty years earlier, and it is apparently richer 
in lofty sentiments and paeans on liberty. These last are said to 
have been largely responsible for its immediate popularity, since 

^ April 9, 1737. Robert Phillimore {Memoirs of Lyttelton, 1845, i. loo) says that 
"Fielding and Pitt were scarcely behind Lyttelton in extolling" the merits of Leonidas. 

2 Lines 5S6-77- 

' Poems on Several Occasions (Oxford, 1757), 33. Striking testimony to Glover's 
immediate vogue is afforded by the publication, within a year, of Henry Pemberton's 
Observations on Poetry, especially the Epic, occasioned by Leonidas (1738). "Pray who 
is that Mr. Glover," asked Swift, writing from Ireland to Pope, May 31, 1737, "who 
writ the epic poem called Leonidas, which is reprinting here, and has great vogue?" 
"Nothing else," according to Joseph Warton (in his edition of Pope's Works, 1797, ix. 
297 n.), "was read or talked of at Leicester-house." Some of this popularity is un- 
doubtedly due to the subject-matter; for Sou they wrote to Bedford, Nov. 13, 1793, 
"Leonidas . . . has ever been a favourite poem with me; I have read it, perhaps more 
frequently than any other composition, and always with renewed pleasure . . . perhaps, 
chiefly owing to the subject." 

* They "fell plumb into the water of oblivion," declares Dowden {Life of Southey, 
1879, p. 51). Cowper, who had to read the first book twice before he could understand 
it, concluded finally, "It does not deserve to be cast aside as lumber, the treatment 
which I am told it has generally met with" (letters to Samuel Rose and Lady Hesketh, 
Jan. 19 and Feb. 4. 1789). Southey thought that if published nearer to Leonidas it 
might have "partaken the gale, for its merits are not inferior" {Life and Works of 
Cowper, 1836, ii. 319). 



282 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

the Prince of Wales's party, who thought themselves the guardians 
of freedom, treated it as an attack on Walpole.^ 

As ''Leonidas Glover" was but twenty-five years old when he 
published his first epic, he naturally exhibits in it the faults typical 
of youth, — rant, pose, sentimentality, a self-conscious, romantic 
idealism, and a lack of understanding of real men and women. His 
characters shine with so many virtues that it is difficult to see them. 
The "god-like presence" of Leonidas, for example, is pictured thus: 

Dignity and grace 
Adorn his frame, and manly beauty join'd 
With strength Herculean. On his aspect shines 
Sublimest virtue, and desire of fame, 
Where justice gives the laurel; in his eye 
The inextinguishable spark, which fires 
The souls of patriots: while his brow supports 
Undaunted valour, and contempt of death.'' 

H e moves like a tragic hero : 

Now from th' assembly with majestic steps 

Forth moves their godlike king, with conscious worth 

His gen'rous bosom glowing.^ 

Even when with his family he is the same : 

Great in woe 
Amid his children, who inclose him round, 
He stands indulging tenderness and love 
In graceful tears.* 

Between personages of this sort there can be no conversation. In- 
stead, each delivers orations at the others, and, though the interstices 
between their speeches are filled with prodigies of valor, it is the 
harangues that claim the chief interest. 

It is hard to see how any one who really appreciated the direct 
simplicity and naturalness of Homer or the native dignity of Milton's 
style could have failed to detect the theatrical pose and buckram 
stiffening of Glover's work. But the eighteenth century was too 
fond of swelUng phrases, lofty sentiments, heroic characters, and 
striking attitudes to be over-particular as to whether they were 
sensible and true. They were impressive, and that was enough. 
Modern readers who share these tastes — and there are not a few — 
may likewise find the two epics interesting, may be moved by the 
heroic actions depicted in them and by their expression of scorn for 

1 Lyttelton's poem on Leonidas {Poetical Works, 1801, pp. 136-8) deals with it not 
from the esthetic but entirely from the political point of view. 

2 i. 117-24. ^ i. 174-6; of. ii. 67-9. *i. 369-72. 



I 



EPIC POETRY: GLOVER 283 

what is low, may see beauty in their many long similes and splendor 
in the roll of their lines, or may, like earlier generations, enjoy de- 
claiming their sounding speeches and learning their quotable pas- 
sages; but most persons will, like Mr. Saintsbury, find them "im- 
possible." 

When Lyttelton wrote, " If the Diction of Leonidas be softer, and 
the general Flow of the Numbers more harmonious than that of 
Milton himself, it may, in part, be ascrib'd to Mr. Pope, as the great 
Polisher and Improver of our Verse," ^ he called attention to the two 
main influences at work on Glover's epic, — Pope's Homer and 
Paradise Lost, Although there is no mythological machinery in 
Leonidas, the subject-matter of the work, the numerous battles and 
speeches, and the long similes are undoubtedly patterned after the 
Iliad; the characterization, spirit, and atmosphere, the self-conscious- 
ness and artificiality which pervade the whole, suggest Pope; the style 
is obviously Miltonic, and the diction that of Milton conventional- 
ized by Pope. The prosody also reveals a strange union of Puritan 
and Augustan conceptions, for it is blank verse fettered by the regu- 
larity and end-stopped lines of the heroic couplet. A few men of 
discernment, like Samuel Say,^ must have been annoyed by these 
bastard Miltonisms; but the majority failed, as did Lyttelton and 
Pemberton, to perceive the tawdry glitter of Leonidas or the monot- 
ony of its "softer" and "more harmonious" versification.^ Part of 
its popularity was unquestionably due to these very defects, to its 
combining in what seems to us an absurd manner the three principal 
literary forces of the day, classicism, Popeism, and Miltonism.'^ 

Between 1737 and 1792 Glover had the field of the blank- verse 
epic practically to himself. In 1756, to be sure, George Keate began 
his Helvetiad, but was dissuaded by Voltaire from continuing it; ^ 
and though in 1759 Alexander Gordon, "a volunteer in the Prussian 
service," presented to Frederick the Great his Prussiad, which deals 
with the Silesian war, yet a piece of less than six hundred lines can 
hardly be termed an epic.® Joseph Hazard's still briefer Conquest of 

' CoOTWOM5eM5e, April 9, 1737. '^ See above, p. 90. ^ See above, p. 56. 

* For Glover's Miltonic Poem on Sir Isaac Newton (1728), and his London, or the 
Progress of Commerce (1739), see p. 383 below. 

' This same year appeared the anonymous Sophronia, one of the very few unrimed 
narrative poems of the period that are not epic. It contains five books of extremely 
moral, extremely dull, and extremely Miltonic blank verse. 

® The Prussiad pictures Frederick as a very pious but crafty prince who 
From motives justify'd, and self-defence, 
Urg'd, tho' reluctant, drew his legions forth (lines 2-3). 
It is pompous, uninspired, and obviously Miltonic. The same may be said of the 
Prussian Campaign, * ' a Poem celebrating the Atchievements of Frederick the Great in 



284 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Quebec (1769) and Charles Crawford's First Canto of the Revolution 
(1776) are negligible for the same reason.^ Crawford, it is true, 
planned a mighty effort in twelve parts dealing with the revolution 
of 1688, but he apparently never published more than one book, 
which does not finish Monmouth's rebellion.^ Sir William Jones 
seems not to have got even so far as this with his Britain Discov- 
ered (which was to be "an heroic poem in twelve books"), per- 
haps because he could not determine whether to use blank verse or 
rime.^ 

The one heroic work of epic proportions to be published between 
Glover's Leonidas (1737) and his Athenaid (1787) was an account of 
the fall of Babylon and the return of the Israelites to Jerusalem 
which the Rev. William H. Roberts brought out in 1774 as Judah 
Restored. It is not an important contribution. There is nothing 
objectionable about it, to be sure; Roberts does not rant and is never 
ridiculous or sentimental, but his book is monotonous and unin- 
teresting and there seems to be no adequate excuse for its existence. 
Its author undoubtedly thought it would be of value religiously, like 
his dull, pompous Poetical Epistle on the Existence, Attributes, and 
Providence of God (pubUshed in three parts in 1771), for biblical re- 
ferences are spattered over the foot of nearly every page. Perhaps, 
since he was for many years one of the king's chaplains, he may have 
intended Judah to edify royalty. At least it has the pomp befitting 
so august an audience, and is in keeping with what we know about 
the writer, "a portly man and of much pride and state," — "parad- 
ing" is Fanny Burney's word.* Yet for eighteenth-century blank 
verse, particularly as used for heroic purposes, his style, though 

1756-7," which William Dobson (who had translated Paradise Lost into Latin and who 
used its verse in two translations from the Latin, see p. 328, n. 2, below) issued in 1758. 
^ Note also Quebec ( 1 760) , " a Poetical Essay in imitation of the Miltonic Stile : being 
a regular Narrative of the . . . Transactions performed by the British Forces ... in the 
glorious Expedition against Canada, in the year 1759; the Performance of a Volunteer." 
The American war, the "low and almost desperate state" in which it left England, 
together with "her sudden and unexpected recovery, under Mr. Pitt's administration," 
forms the subject of the seven dull books of James Brown's Britain Preserved (Edin. , 
1800). The year previous William Hildreth had poured out a quantity of unusually 
heroic blank verse which he termed The Niliad, "an Epic Poem written in honour of the 
glorious Victory off the Mouth of the Nile." 

* Although Crawford commends Milton highly in the opening lines, and makes un- 
blushing use of his style and language, it is the muse of the "still greater" Voltaire that 
he invokes (see Cril. Rev.,x\i. 475-8). 

' For the "design" of his poem, with one passage in heroic couplets and two longer 
ones without rime (written in 1770), see his Works, 1807, ii. 429-54. 

* Cole (Addit. MS. 5879, f. 38 b), quoted in Diet. Nat. Biog.; Madame D'Arblay's 
Diary, Nov. 23, 1786. 



EPIC POETRY: ROBERTS 285 

hardly natural enough to warrant Southey's praise for its "plain 
dignity," ^ is comparatively free from distortion and pomposity. 

Roberts was one of those ardent admirers of blank verse who 
wished to banish rime entirely from serious poetry; yet he under- 
stood his favorite measure sufficiently to see that few who wrote it 
had "learnt the secret of relieving the ear by a proper variation of 
the cadence " or by the use of run-over lines. He avoided these mis- 
takes himself by patterning his work after "that wonderful monu- 
ment of human Genius, Paradise lost." ^ He made no secret of this 
indebtedness; how could he, indeed, in view of the style, the strange 
proper names, and the verbal borrowings of a passage like this? 

That throne, where conscious of superior worth 
Cyrus exalted sits. Around him stand 

.... Carmanian chiefs, 
And Arachosian, Ctesias, and the son 
Of old Orontes, and that dreaded name 
Tigranes. Near the throne on either side 
Stands Gadatas, and Gobryas.' 

The first attempt after Paradise Lost to write a Christian epic 
seems to be Richard Cumberland's Calvary, or the Death of Christ 
(1792). Its debt to Milton is, as the author frankly acknowledged, 
very great.* The first of the eight books is devoted to a council, 

^ "I read it often," he says, "and can still recur to it with satisfaction: and perhaps I 
owe something to the plain dignity of its style, which is suited to the subject, and every- 
where bears the stamp of good sense and careful erudition" {Life and Works of Cowper, 
1836, iii. 32 n.). G. I. Huntingford, in his hitroduction to the Writing of Greek (pt. ii, 
3d ed., Oxford, 1791, p. 119), remarks of Jtidah Restored, "It is impossible to mention 
this Work, without adding, that it contains many Sublime and Pathetic strokes." 

^ Judah, preface, pp. xx, xvi (but Roberts does not say he patterned his work after 
Milton's). His Poetical Epistle to Christopher Anstey, on the English Poets, chiefly those 
who have written in Blank Verse (1773), begins with attacking rime and praising Milton 
(quoted in Crit. Rev., xxxv. 53). 

' iii. 442-51; cf. P. L.,ii. 1-5,959-67. Even the last line of the poem, 
Sonorous trumpets join their martial sound, 
is adapted from Paradise Lost, i. 540, 

Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds. 

Other borrowings that I have noticed are: "streams, like a meteor" (ii. 163, cf. P. L., 
i- 537); "thrice his colour chang'd" (iii. 460, cf. P. L., iv. 114-15); "sees, or thinks 
he sees" (iii. 464, cf. P. L., i. 783-4, part of a simile in each case; see also Judah, vi. 
162); "flies diverse" (v. 41, cf. P. L., x. 284); "draws his train" (vi. 158, cf. P. L., 
vii. 306, of a river in each case); "for speed succinct" (vi. 368, cf. P. L., iii. 643); 
"comes mantling o'er his arms" (vi. 456, cf. P. L., v. 279); "uncreated light" (vi. 490, 
cf . P. L. , iii. 4-6, ii. 150) ; 

Long the way, 
And perilous, which from Chaldea leads 
To Salem's ruin'd walls (iii. 173-5, cf. P- L.,n. 432-3). 

* "It was not till I had taken up Milton's immortal poem of Paradise Lost, and read 



286 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

summoned by Satan, in which various plans for defeating the Christ 
are discussed. After several of the fallen angels have given their 
opinions it is decided that Moloch shall tempt Judas. The entire 
deliberation is modelled closely on that held in Pandemonium: the 
speakers are the same, their natures are the same, and so is the trend 
of their several suggestions. Throughout the poem, which deals with 
the life of Christ from the last supper to the resurrection, Satan and 
his angels play an important part. Gabriel is also a character, and in 
the harrying of hell, which strongly suggests Paradise Lost, he is the 
one who executes Christ's commands. Verbal borrowings are every- 
where,^ and, as this passage will show, the diction, style, and con- 
structions could hardly be more Miltonic: 

His princes thus review'd, from the hill top 

Satan swift-glancing flew, and in the midst 

Rose like a meteor; whereat all the host 

Sent up a general shout : he with his hand 

Gave sign, and wheel'd the Stygian phalanx round. . . . 

Tho' in his heart, by mut'nous passions torn. 

Thought clash'd with thought, and all was anarchy. 

Yet with assimi'd composure beck'ning forth 

His princes, whilst th' inferior throng stood oflf, 

And mute attention reign'd, in few thus spake.^ 

Calvary was at first neglected; but Nathan Drake's commendation 
in his Literary Hours (1798) brought it "out of . . . obscurity, and," 
in the opinion of the author, "obtained for it a place amongst our 
British classics." ^ As a result it went through seven editions in 
eleven years and was reprinted at least three times in America. It is 

it studiously and completely through," he says in his Memoirs (1807, ii. 264), "that I 
brought the plan of Calvary to a consistency, and resolved to venture on the attempt." 

^ For example: "fuel'd clouds" (i. 76, cf . P. L., i. 234); " bold emprize " (i. 245, cf. 
P. L., xi. 642, and Comus, 610); "Chemos, the sin of Moab; power obscene" (i. 281, 
cf. P. L., i. 406); "In me is ... no delay" (i. 716, cf. P. L., xii. 615); "pow'rs and do- 
minions" (iii. 690, cf. P. L.,u. II, the opening of Satan's address in each case) ; "Mam- 
mon exalted sate " (iii. 762, cf. P. i.,ii. s); " of adamantine proof " (iii. 845, cf . 5aw50«, 
134); "the grisly monarch" (iv. 169, cf. P. i.,ii. 704, iv. 821); " Chaos and old Night " 
(iv. 787, cf. P. L., i. 543); "golden panoply" (vi. 244, cf. P. L., vi. 527), etc., etc. An 
idea is often borrowed from Milton but expressed in somewhat different words, as in 
i. 212-14: 

Satan thus 
Stood eminent, and call'd his dark compeers; 
So loud he call'd that to the farthest bounds ... 
(cf. P. L.,\. 589-91, 314-15)- 

2 i. 352-66; cf. P. L., i. 533-621. 

' Cumberland's Memoirs, ii. 377. Drake's analysis of the poem {Literary Hours, 
3d ed., 1804, nos. 18-21) seems to be based upon Addison's Spectator papers on Paradise 
Lost. 



EPIC POETRY: CUMBERLAND — SOUTHEY 287 

much the best piece of religious blank verse produced in the eight- 
eenth century.^ 

Encouraged by the success of Calvary, Cumberland contemplated a 
second heroic work, to be based on the Old Testament. " Whilst these 
thoughts were in my mind," he tells us, "... my friend Sir James 
Burges suggested to me the history of Moses . . . and . . . imparted to 
me a plan deliberately and minutely methodized, and apportioned 
into books . . . with the argument of each correctly drawn up; a work 
. . . which seemed to leave little to the pen, that followed him, except 
the task of filling up the outline," ^ which the two men undertook 
jointly. Not much could be expected of a poem composed in this 
fashion, even if it had borne a less benumbing title than The Exodiad. 
Accordingly, although the first four books (published in 1807) took 
the Israelites only to the wilderness, the public seemed so content to 
leave them there that the remainder of the work never appeared.^ 
Cumberland's Retrospection, a Poem in Familiar Verse (181 1), 
written in his eightieth year, deals with his grandfather (Richard 
Bentley, the famous scholar) and his friends Johnson, Burke, Rey- 
nolds, and Garrick. The style, which has only a suggestion of 
Milton, is much the most direct and natural that he wrote.^ 

Judah Restored was soon forgotten. The Athenaid had been still 
born, and Calvary did not become known until after 1798; so that 
Southey had some reason for attributing part of the success of his 
Joan of Arc (1796) to the dearth of new English epics in the sixty 
years following the publication of Leonidas. This lack the young 
republican felt born to remedy. ''Producing an epic poem," he 
wrote, *' . . . had been the earliest of my day-dreams. I had begun 

^ At least one line of Calvary (vii. 179) is worthy to live: 

Like the slow swell of seas without a wind. 

The rising of Death from his pit in response to Satan's summons is also impressively 
described (vii. 397-413). 

^ Memoirs, ii. 377-8. 

' Another work on the same subject, of the same calibre, and published the same 
year is Charles Hoyle's Exodus, of which I have seen only extracts. In the thirteen 
books of this poem, which apparently uses the Miltonic machinery, the Edinburgh 
Review (xi. 363, 369) found "no ray of interest or entertainment. ... All is comfort and 
tranquillity in the calm creation of Mr. Hoyle; and the excellent treatise on Whist by 
his illustrious synonim, is fully as likely to betray the reader into unbecoming emo- 
tions." Presumably the same Rev. Charles Hoyle wrote sonnets on Scottish scenery 
which were praised by his friend W. L. Bowles (Scenes and Shadows of Days De- 
parted, 1837, p. xlii, n.). 

* Cumberland made a translation of part of Virgil's third Georgic in Miltonic blank 
verse when he was a boy of thirteen, and undertook an epic on the history of India soon 
after leaving college. Specimens of each work are given in his Memoirs (i. 82-7, 168- 
74). 



288 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

many such." ^ Nor was it long before he brought one to completion, 
for he was just entering his twentieth year when, in the mornings of 
six short weeks, he composed his Joan of Arc. 

This astonishing work had the still more astonishing good fortune 
of being accepted by a bookseller, Southey's friend and fellow- 
townsman, Joseph Cottle, — himself destined to wake the epic lyre, 
— who recompensed the author as handsomely as he printed his 
poem. The first proof-sheet, however, somewhat dampened the 
self-complacency of the young bard, who for six months "re-cast 
and re-composed" the work ''while the printing went on." Before 
the second edition appeared he made other extensive changes, 
omitting all that remained of the allegorical machinery (in part the 
work of Coleridge) which he had originally introduced throughout 
the poem, and writing an entirely new and much better beginning.^ 
As other alterations were made in 1806, 181 2, and 1837, the poem 
that we now have is much more simple and natural, less crudely 
Miltonic and absurd, than what the boy of nineteen wrote. ''Pity's 
crystal gem," for instance, no longer hangs on Joan's "rubied 
cheek"; she does not in her first speech address the Bastard of 
Orleans ("adown" whose "batter'd arms the tide of hfe RoU'd 
purpling") as if he were a child, or mention a wolf "horrid with 
brumal ice"; ^ but she is still "the delegated Maid," and at times 
she still speaks in words like these, almost unchanged from those 
that appeared in the first edition: 

"Do thou, Dunois, 

Announce my mission to the royal ear. 

I on the river's winding bank the while 

Will roam, collecting for the interview 

My thoughts, though firm, yet troubled. Who essays 

Achievements of great import will perforce 

Feel the heart heave; and in my breast I own 

Such perturbation." 

On the banks of Vienne 

Devious the Damsel turn'd.* 

The epic heroine who deUvers this address is, of course, not the 
simple peasant girl to whom, as she was abiding in the field keeping 
watch over her flocks, the angel of the Lord appeared as he had to 

1 See above, p. 276. For an account of some of these boyish epics, the earliest of 
which, composed when he was between nine and ten, was an imitation of Ariosto in 
heroic couplets, see his Life and Correspondence (1849), i. 1 18-19. 

^ See prefaces to Joan of Arc and Vision of the Maid of Orleans, in Poetical Works 
(1837), vol. i, pp. xv-xx, 304. 

' First ed.,i. 27-8, 18-19,49. 

* Edition of 1837, iii. 125-33 (first ed., iii. 101-9). 



EPIC POETRY: SOUTHEY 289 

other shepherds centuries before. Yet for his melodramatic misrepre- 
sentation Southey was not to blame, since the facts regarding Joan's 
life and character were not known in 1796; and at least he did not 
picture her as a witch, a maniac, or a charlatan. Indeed, the fault 
with ''the missioned Maid" is that she has little character of any 
kind; she is simply a heroic personage. 

In this respect, as in its style, diction, and sentimentality, its 
fondness for rhetoric and noble sentiments, the poem is obviously 
of the eighteenth century. Its model was Leonidas, which Southey, as 
we have seen, thought he had read "more frequently than any other 
composition, and always with renewed pleasure . . . perhaps, chiefly 
owing to the subject." ^ The subject, the defence of liberty against 
despotism, was unquestionably a principal source of the attraction 
that Leonidas had for the enthusiastic young republican, and it was 
because Joan of Arc had fought for this same cause that he chose her 
as the heroine of his poem. She was also French and therefore doubly 
interesting, for those were the wondrous days of the French Revo- 
lution, when the world's great age seemed to begin anew. "Few 
persons but those who have hved in it," the poet wrote long after- 
wards, "can conceive or comprehend what the memory of the French 
Revolution was, nor what a visionary world seemed to open upon 
those who were just entering it. Old things seemed passing away, 
and nothing was dreamt of but the regeneration of the human race."^ 
And, just as Wordsworth and Coleridge hoped for a French victory 
when England attacked the young repubhc, so Southey, acting "in 
direct opposition" to the rule that an epic should be national, chose 
for his subject the defeat of his country. "If among my readers," 
he announced, "there be one who can wish success to injustice, be- 
cause his countrymen supported it, I desire not that man's appro- 
bation." 3 Consistently enough, therefore, he makes Joan inter- 
nationally-minded, — 

To England friendly as to all the world, 
Foe only to the great blood-guilty ones, 
The masters and the murderers of mankind. 

^ See above, p. 281, n. 3. He wrote these words a few weeks after completing 
Joan. William Haller, in his admirable Early Life 0} Southey (N. Y., 191 7, p. 107), 
thinks that Lucan's Pharsalia, " a great favorite with all the young romantic revolu- 
tionists," was the other chief influence on Joan. 

^ Letter to Caroline Bowles, Feb. 13, 1824. 

' Preface to the first edition of Joan, p. vii. What Southey reprinted as this preface 
in the collected edition of his Poetical Works contains so many omissions, additions, and 
changes that it is much nearer to the preface of the second edition. 



290 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

"May the God of Peace and Love," she prays, 

Be merciful to those blood-guilty men 
Who came to desolate the realm of France, 
To make us bow the knee, and crouch like slaves, 
Before a tyrant's footstool! . . . 

.... Wretched men. 
Forced or inveigled from their homes, or driven 
By Need and Hunger to the trade of blood.' 

Southey, accordingly, had grounds for attributing the "chief cause" 
of the poem's "favourable reception" to its voicing the "republi- 
can spirit" which was then sweeping across England.^ But this was 
not the only cause, for even in its original form, with all its absurdities 
on its head, the piece is effective in a rhetorical way; it contains 
pleasing nature-pictures, and is more spontaneous, interesting, and 
rapid in its action, as well as more vigorous and condensed in its 
expression, than are Southey's later epics. 

Even before his first heroic poem was published the industri- 
ous bard was occupied with a second, which he thought "would 
probably be the greatest" he should ever produce.^ This work, 
Madoc, though completed four years later, was not published till 
1805, when six more years had elapsed, one of which was "diligently 
employed in reconstructing" the poem.'* In its first form it was 
probably not unlike its predecessor, but as finally published it differs 
markedly from Joan in style and versification, a change due not 
alone to the careful revision it received, but to Southey's increased 
maturity and conservatism. The crimson glow that had flushed the 
heavens and had seemed to the author of Joan the dawn of a new 
era had faded into the light of common day. The enthusiastic col- 
lege boy who dreamed of an ideal commonwealth on the shores of 
the Susquehanna had become the busy, travelled man strugghng to 
support a family, who was shortly to accept a pension from the 
crown, and to whom the beauty of regularity and propriety, the 
advantages of a settled and well-ordered life, appealed more and 
more. The change is reflected in the subject-matter of the two 
works; for, while Joan fights the oppressors of her country for the 
preservation of liberty, Madoc sails away from the oppression and 
injustice of his native land to seek freedom in the New World, as the 

' viii. 642-4, X. 82-91. These extracts are taken from the poem as it was first 
printed, because their vehemence is somewhat toned down in later editions. 

" Preface to Joan, in Poetical Works (1837), vol. i, p. xxix. 

' See preface to the first edition of Joan, p. ix; and preface to Madoc, in Poetical 
Works, vol. v, p. xi. 

* Preface to Madoc {ib. p. xii) . 



EPIC POETRY: SOUTHEY 29 1 

poet himself had withdrawn to the solitudes of the lake country. 
Yet it is easy to exaggerate the contrast, and not to recognize in the 
colony Madoc established in America a kind of epic pantisocracy, a 
realization in verse of the dreams of the young Coleridge and 
Southey. 

Readers of Madoc were told, "It assumes not the degraded title of 
Epic"; ^ and indeed such a title would have been more of an un- 
warranted assumption than its author realized, for the work is really 
a romantic tale. Though far from exhibiting the oriental strange- 
ness of Thalaha or the Curse of Kehama, it is the production of one 
who as a boy read and reread the Jerusalem Delivered and the Or- 
lando Furioso and who * took Spenser for his master.' ^ Madoc's 
voyage across the Atlantic, his battles with the Aztecs, their human 
sacrifices, snake gods, and the rest, might, to be sure, furnish the 
material for an epic, but they naturally suggest the romantic treat- 
ment that Southey gave them. His emphasis on the tender emotions, 
his frequent pictures of nature, and above all his diffuseness make 
his pleasant meanderings too sentimental and famiUar, too deficient 
in austerity, condensation, and vigor, too " soft," for an epic. These 
lines are typical : 

The affection of his voice, 
So mild and solemn, soften'd David's heart, 
He saw his brother's eyes, suffused with tears, 
Shine in the moon-beam as he spake; the King 
Remembered his departure, and he felt 
Feelings, which long from his disnatured breast 
Ambition had expell'd: he could almost 
Have follow'd their strong impulse.' 

The "softness," it will be observed, makes itself felt in the style and 
language, which in general are simple, natural, and conversational, 
too much so to be epic. It had been said of Joan, "The language is, 
for the most part, modelled on that of Milton," ^ and, "The style of 
the first book seems to waver in its choice of a model between Milton 
and Cowper. In the greatly superior second it becomes wholly Mil- 
tonic." 5 No such comment was passed on Madoc. Yet it would 
have been well-nigh impossible at the close of the eighteenth century 
to write a blank-verse epic, or what aspired to be one, that was unin- 
fluenced by Paradise Lost. Accordingly, there is no part of this 
work or of its successor that does not contain lines as Miltonic as 
these : 

^ Preface to the first edition. Yet the preface to Joan had announced "Madoc, an 
Epic Poem." 

^ Poetical Works (1837) , vol. i, preface, p. viii. * Mo. Rev. , enl. ed. , xix. 363. 
* lb. V. 129-30. 5 ^iss Seward's Letters, iv. 295. 



292 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

But other doom was his, more arduous toil 
Yet to achieve, worse danger to endure, 
Worse evil to be quell 'd, and higher good 
Which passeth not away educed from ill; 
Whereof all unforeseeing, yet for all 
Prepared at heart, he over ocean sails.^ 

Southey's final long poem, the first volume he issued after be- 
coming poet laureate, was Roderick, the Last of the Goths, which 
he began in 1809 and published five years later. It is much like its 
predecessor, cumbered with hundreds of pages of learned historical 
and illustrative notes, and without the "machinery" or the long 
similes of the epic, which it neither claims to be nor is. But it is 
better than Madoc, more condensed and closely knit, of tougher 
fibre, less sentimental, and seventy-five pages shorter. Religion 
and liberty, always prominent in Southey's poems, are here again 
the mainspring of the action; for Roderick, the last of the Gothic 
kings of Spain, who has dishonored the daughter of one of his nobles, 
after a long penance returns disguised as a priest to help save his 
country from the Moors. Sometimes, though not as a rule, the 
style and language are as Miltonic as in this passage: 

Cautious with course circuitous they shunn'd 
The embattled city, which in eldest time 
Thrice-greatest Hermes built, so fables say, 
Now subjugate, but fated to behold 
Ere long the heroic Prince (who passing now 
Unknown and silently the dangerous track, 
Turns thither his regardant eye) come down 
Victorious from the heights.^ 

Nobody now reads or even talks about the long narrative poems 
upon which Southey confidently built his expectations of Uterary 
immortality. On the contrary, they receive much less than their 
due, and their author is remembered, if remembered at all, as the 
friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge who wrote a poem on a fa- 
mous battle and some tinkling lines about a waterfall. 

During his college days or soon afterwards, Southey began to 
compose the short blank-verse Inscriptions which he turned out at 
intervals throughout his long life. These poems — fifty-two in all — 
make some use of the style of Paradise Lost, but were, in the begin- 
ning at least, confessedly patterned after the similar productions of 
Akenside.^ It may be, indeed, that all Southey's Miltonisms were de- 

^ Poetical Works, v. 204. 

2 lb. ix. 102. Southey also planned an epic on Noah, in hexameters: see his Common^ 
place Book, 4th series (1850) , 2-3. ^ Poetical Works, vol. iii, p. xi. 



EPIC POETRY: LANDOR 293 

rived second-hand from Glover, Akenside, Cowper, Bowles, and other 
eighteenth-century blank-verse poets. He does not mention Milton 
among the twenty writers by whom he felt that his work had been 
affected,^ and from the nature of his infrequent references to him it 
is pretty clear that he had no real love for his poetry .^ It is an indi- 
cation of the passing of Milton's vogue that a poet so preoccupied 
with religion and ordered freedom as was Southey should be indif- 
ferent to Paradise Lost. Doubtless it seemed cold and austere to the 
romantic author of Thalaba, the domestic, sentimental editor of 
Kirke White's Remains. He admired it and left it alone, as have a 
host of his successors. We have arrived at the nineteenth century. 
Very unlike Southey's attitude is that of his friend and admirer, 
Walter Savage Landor, for Landor is Milton's most ardent eulogist. 
Two lines in Paradise Lost he calls *'the richest jewel that Poetry 
ever wore," which he "would rather have written . . . than all the 
poetry that has been written since Milton's time in all the regions of 
the earth." ^ Later he says, "My ear, I confess it, is dissatisfied with 
everything, for days and weeks after the harmony of Paradise Lost."* 
In one of his poems he speaks of 

The mighty man who open'd Paradise, 
Harmonious far above Homerick song, 
Or any song that human ears shall hear;* 

and he wrote, "Never will I concede that he [Dante] has written so 
grand a poem as Paradise Lost; no, nor any man else. The Iliad in 

^ See ib., vol. i, general preface. But neither does he mention Glover, whom, as we 
know, he read repeatedly (see p. 281, n. 3, above). 

^ See letters to Miss Barker, Feb. 17 and March 3, 1804, in Selections from Letters 
(1856), i. 160, 168; and below, pp. 559 n. 4, 565 n. i. There are more favorable com- 
ments in his Life and Correspondence (1849) , i- 86, 187, 191, iii. 204, and in his inscription 
for Henry Marten's apartment {Poems, 1 797, p. 60) . The only book he carried with him 
on a tramp in 1 793 was Milton's Defence. In his Hymn to the Penates {Poetical Works, ii. 
277) he points out a borrowing from Paradise Lost. In Modoc, " the griding steel Shall 
sheer its mortal way" {ib. v. 54) was certainly suggested by Satan's first wound (P. L., 
vi- 325-30); a "crystal Ark, instinct with life" {ib. 84), recalls God's chariot "in- 
stinct with spirit" and its "crystal firmament" (P. L., vi. 752, 757); "bedeck'd with 
gems and gold" {ib. 336) may be from Paradise Lost, i. 538, vi. 474-5- So, too, "rolling 
round his angry eyes" and "collected in himself" {Joan, first ed., viii. 454, x. 280) are 
like Paradise Lost, i. 56, ix. 673. For other poems of Southey's that show the influence 
of Milton, see below, pp. 473 n., 518-19, 564-5, and Bibl. I, 1794 w., 1797, i797 w., 
1828 w. 

' Imaginary Conversations, "Southey and Landor" {Works and Life, ed. Forster, 
1876, iv. 445-6). The two lines are from Paradise Lost, iv. 310-11, 
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride, 
And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay. 

* Conversations {ib.^yi). 

' To the Author of "Festus" {ib. viii. 238). 



294 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 



comparison is Ida to the Andes. The odes of Pindar to Milton's 
lyrics, that is, the sonnets, Allegro, Penseroso, &c. are Epsom race- 
course to the New Forest." ^ These utterances might seem like the 
impulsive superlatives of one who did not weigh his words, were it 
not that Landor expressed himself to this effect frequently through- 
out his life. He is constantly referring to Milton. Two of the " Imag- 
inary Conversations" are devoted to him,^ in three more he is one 
of the speakers,^ and in several others he is discussed.^ Even in 
Landor's verse, where direct references would scarcely be expected, 
Milton is made the subject of several poems and is mentioned in 
many others, especially in those written during old age.^ 

Landor came under the spell of the man 'great above all other 
men ' ^ in his twentieth year, when after his rustication from college 
he was spending his time in lonely rambles along the Welsh coast 
and in extensive reading. At first it was the classics, and particularly 
Pindar, that stirred him; but later, as he tells us, "My prejudices 
in favour of ancient literature began to wear away on Paradise Lost; 
and even the great hexameter sounded to me tinkling when I had 
recited aloud in my solitary walks on the seashore the haughty 
appeal of Satan and the deep penitence of Eve." ^ 

The most important fruit of this period was the poem Gebir, which 
appeared in that annus mirabilis 1798, the year that saw the publica- 
tion of the Lyrical Ballads, of Malthus's far-reaching Essay on Popu- 
lation, of the first significant American novel (Brockden Brown's 
Wieland), and of Schiller's Wallensteins Lager; that witnessed the 
completion of Sense afid Sensibility, the birth of Leopardi, the check 
to Napoleon's power at the battle of the Nile, and the composition 
of the first great sonata produced by the revolutionary genius of 
Beethoven. None of the morning stars of that new day attracted 
less attention than did Gebir, but among its few readers was a re- 
viewer who accused the author of "the common error of those who 
aspire to the composition of blank-verse, by borrowing too many 
phrases and epithets from our incomparable Milton." * "I challenge 

' Letter of Jan. 8, 1850, quoted in Forster's Landor (1869), ii. 524. 
^ The two between Southey and Landor. 

' In the two between Milton and Andrew Marvel, and the one between Galileo, 
Milton, and a Dominican. 

* In those between Abbe Delille and Landor, Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker, 
and most of the modern "Conversations." 

' See, for example, Works, etc. (ed. Forster), viii. 137, 144, 202, 203, 215, 220, 229, 
232, 239, 250, 258, 282, 285, 322, 326, 339, 341. 

* Last Fruit, " Various," xxix. 

^ Conversations, "Abbe Delille and Landor" {Works, etc., iv. 101-2). 

* Mo. Rev.,eid. ed., xxxi. 206-7. 



1 



EPIC POETRY: LANDOR 295 

him to produce them," Landor fuhninated in an unpublished re- 
joinder. "... For the language of Paradise Lost ought not to be the 
language of Gebir. ... I devoutly offer up my incense at the shrine 
of Milton. Woe betide the intruder that would steal its jewels! It 
requires no miracle to detect the sacrilege. The crime will be found 
its punishment." ^ Several later critics have, however, maintained 
that the poem is Miltonic,^ an opinion the more natural because 
Landor's enthusiasm for Paradise Lost began shortly before he wrote 
Gebir, and because his earlier pieces were composed in heroic coup- 
lets of the pronouncedly neo-classic type. But the fact is that, as 
Southey's blank verse ought not to be Miltonic but is, so Landor's 
ought to be but is not. Undoubtedly the rebellious Oxford boy re- 
ceived stimulus, inspiration, and guidance from his reading of the 
epic; undoubtedly his change from the couplet to blank verse was 
due to that reading, and naturally enough there are some borrowed 
phrases and occasionally a line or two that have something of a 
Miltonic sound. Inversions are frequent, as they are in Greek and 
Roman poetry, and adjectives are at times used for adverbs; but the 
abruptness of the style prevents anything like the organ tone or the 
sonorous pomp of Paradise Lost. If the effect of Landor's poetry is 
ever Miltonic, it is in these lines: 

"Than Rhine 
What river from the mountains ever came 
More stately? most the simple crown adorns 
Of rushes and of willows intertwined 
With here and there a flower: his lofty brow 
Shaded with vines and mistletoe and oak 
He rears, and mystic bards his fame resound. . . ." 
She toucht his eyelashes with libant lip 
And breath'd ambrosial odours, o'er his cheek 
Celestial warmth suffusing.' 

What may at first seem to be Miltonic in Gebir will usually prove 
to be classic; in fact, parts of it were originally written in Latin. The 
real model for its style is explained in one of its author's letters: 
"When I began to write Gebir, I had just read Pindar a second time. 

^ Quoted in Forster's Landor, i. 130. 

^ Notably William Bradley (Early Poems of Landor, 1914) , who gives a large number 
of passages supposed to be taken from Milton or to be in his manner. It seems to me 
that none of these are certain, and that only six of Landor's possible borrowings from 
Milton are worth considering: Gebir, ii. 174 {ci.Lycidas, 165), 233-4 (cf. P. L.,i. 222-3), 
iii. 201-2 (cf. P. L.,i. 177), vi. 2 (cf. P. L., iv. 238); Chrysaor, 200-201 (cf. P. L.,i.4S, 
49). Apparently Mr. Bradley did not notice "robe succinct" (Gebir, i. 176, cf. P. L., 
iii. 643), but he very properly mentions Landor's use of the Miltonic series of nouns 
or adjectives (ib. iv. 22, 59, 228). 

' Gebir, vi. 121-32. 



296 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

. . . What I admired was what nobody else had ever noticed — his 
proud complacency and scornful strength. ... I was resolved to be 
as compendious and exclusive."^ "Compendious and exclusive" 
the piece certainly is, — it has excluded most readers, — but not 
otherwise Pindaric. Landor's classicism is, indeed, not that of the 
best Greek period; it is not Homeric or Sophoclean, but Hellenistic, 
Virgilian, or even Ovidian.^ Restrained and extremely condensed as 
most of the poem is, it has not a few passages, like luxuriant flowers 
sprouting in rocky crannies, that are merely decorative, rich in color 
and warm with tender emotion. 

Gebir is a strange, wild Arabian tale of war, magic, love, the lower 
world, and death; it makes no claim to be an epic. An unfinished 
earlier work, however, The Phocaeans, was intended as heroic poetry. 
If Gebir is a series of fine passages connected by "flea-skips of asso- 
ciation," 3 The Phocaeans lacks even the flea-skips. It is neither 
more nor less Miltonic than its successor, and is interesting chiefly 
as one of the most obscure poems in Enghsh and as an expression of 
its author's enthusiasm for Liberty, to whom it is dedicated.* 

Landor's "finest piece of narrative writing in blank verse," ^ 
Chrysaor, is a brief epic episode similar to The Phocaeans and of 
about the same date. Most of the numerous unrimed pieces that he 
composed in later Ufe are Greek love-stories (Hellenistic again), 
more conversational, less cryptic and abrupt in style, than are his 
youthful verses. Except for their condensed expressions, omitted 
words, their occasional inversions and appositives, they do not sug- 
gest Milton at all.^ Yet this does not prove that the enthusiastic, 

^ Works, etc. (ed. Forster), i. 49. 

^ This is strikingly shown, as Mr. J. H. Hanford remarked to me, in the two lines 
from Paradise Lost that Landor praised as "the richest jewel that Poetry ever wore" 
(see above, p. 293, n. 3). 

^ A remark by William Taylor, quoted in Forster's Landor, i. 182 n. 
* See lines 5-6. "Gebir and From the Phoceans," Landor observed, "were written . . . 
when our young English heads were turned towards the French Revolution, and were 
deluded by a phantom of Liberty" (Letters, etc., ed. Stephen Wheeler, 1897, p. 135). 
Wheeler (ib. 136, 236-8) prints two fragments of The Phocaeans that are not in Crump's 
version, and William Bradley {Early Poems of Landor, 1914, pp. 26-58, 1 13-21) gives 
a helpful analysis and prints an otherwise inaccessible portion of it. Forster omits it 
altogether. ' Colvin'sLowtior (i88i),37. 

® The most Miltonic passage in Landor's shorter poems is this one from his lines 
To John Forster: 

From Eliot's cell 
Death-dark, from Hampden's sadder battle-field, 
From steadfast Cromwell's tribunitian throne. 
Loftier than kings' supported knees could mount, 
Hast thou departed from me, and hast climbed 
Cecropian highths, and ploughed Aegean waves. 



EPIC POETRY: COTTLE 297 

lifelong devotion of the younger to the older Hellenist bore no fruit. 
Milton gave Landor stimulus and inspiration; he furnished a model 
to which the unusual temperament of the young writer responded as 
it did to no other. 

"I should not think," declared Coleridge, "of devoting less than 
twenty years to an Epic Poem. Ten years to collect materials and 
warm my mind with universal science . . . the next five in the com- 
position of the Poem, and the five last in the correction of it."^ 
This plan, characteristic of the originator of large projects which 
remained only projects, was not the one followed by the Homers of 
the day, certainly not by the bard to whom it was mentioned, Joseph 
Cottle. That enterprising and amiable publisher composed three 
epics, aggregating seventy-seven books, in a quarter less time than 
Coleridge allotted to one. It is difficult to take such a writer seri- 
ously, and indeed none of the readers who have ''taken" him at all 
in recent years seem to have done so. Most have been content, with 
Byron, to pass him by as "Mr. Cottle, Amos, Joseph, I don't know 
which, but one or both," ^ and let it go at that. Richard Garnett has 
disposed of him with the comment. "Even Cottle's poems would 
have given a very inadequate idea of his stupidity without his 
memoirs." ' These "memoirs," indeed, entitled Early Recollections, 
chiefly relating to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1837), recount their 
author's chief title to fame, — his friendship with Southey, Cole- 
ridge, and Wordsworth, whose early volumes, including the Lyrical 
Ballads, he published. 

With a fine impartiaHty, Cottle, after composing two epics in 
blank verse, wrote one in couplets which employs the Miltonic 
machinery. This wretched paraphrase of parts of the Old Testa- 
ment narrative. The Messiah (181 5), pictures the fallen angels lying 
on the burning lake, Satan rising to urge that they win over the 
beings recently created to fill their former places in heaven, Beelze- 
bub and Belial speaking against Satan's leadership, but Mammon 
standing by his chief and flying with him through hell and past its 
gate to earth, then the fall, the expulsion from Eden, Satan's return 

1 In a letter to Cottle printed in the latter's Early Recollections (1837), i. 192. Even 
Milton, who devoted much more than twenty years to the preparation of his epic, 
never dreamed of the equipment Coleridge outlined: "I would thoroughly understand 
Mechanics; Hydrostatics; Optics, and Astronomy; Botany; Metallurgy; Fossilism; 
Chemistry; Geology; Anatomy; Medicine; then the mind of man; then the minds of 
men; in all Travels, Voyages, and Histories" {ih.). 

2 English Bards, 406 n. 

' Diet. Nat. Biog. It was Cottle who, by promising to buy all the verse that Cole- 
ridge wrote, enabled him to marry, and who conveyed to him De Quincey's gift of three 
hundred pounds. 



298 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

to hell, and a scene in heaven in which Messiah promises to assume 
the sins of mankind, — all strongly reminiscent of Paradise Lost} 
Many of Cottle's couplets are of the rigid neo-classic type, but he 
has numerous run-over lines and strong internal pauses, while occa- 
sionally he makes use of a style and prosody as Miltonic as 

One burst of universal joyance rose, 
Stupendous.^ 

Had the world been more appreciative of the twenty-eight books of 
The Messiah, the narrative, which extends from the creation to the 
death of David, might have been continued through the New Testa- 
ment; ^ but, since this third epic was issued before the author's two 
preceding ones were assimilated, its reception was such that Cottle 
did not again attempt the heroic strain. 

The two in blank verse had, however, been greeted more favor- 
ably. Alfred (1800), besides being reissued in America, reached a 
fourth English edition and the Fall of Cambria (1808) a second. 
Alfred was praised in the Critical Review for its "rapid, various, and 
interesting" action and its ''many passages which . . . display those 
fine touches which designate the hand of a master." ■* The Monthly 
Review, less favorably impressed,^ criticized particularly "the bad 
consequences resulting from some hasty opinions lately promul- 
gated, respecting simplicity of diction," — an interesting reference 
to Wordsworth's famous utterance. "We have opposed," the re- 
viewer continues, "the recent attempts to despoil poetry of her 
proper language; and we regret that we are again called to assert 
the distinction between simplicity and meanness. . . . The greater 
part of it [Alfred] is really written in measured prose, which is void 

1 There are also minor similarities, and the borrowing of many words and of some 
expressions (such as the departure from Eden "with trembling step and slow," iii. 362, 
cf. P. L., xii. 648). In his preface Cottle explains that his plan put him "under the 
unfortunate necessity of coming in contact with our Greatest Bard. ... I am satisfied," 
he adds, "to become a. foil to one, with whom competition is impossible." 

* viii. 448-9. 

2 The remainder of the Old Testament was, however, to be omitted (preface, p. x). 
Over a third of the part published is devoted to the life of David, but Cottle's handling 
of the story is quite different from Sotheby's or Pennie's (see pp. 304-5 below). 

* New arrangement, xxxi. 171. 

* As was Sou they, who had "laboured hard and honestly to suppress its birth" 
and was " thrown into a cold sweat by recollecting it" (letter to William Taylor, 
Nov. 26, 1800, in J. W. Robberds's Memoir of Taylor, 1843, i. 363); while Lamb ex- 
pressed his opinion in two delicious letters to Coleridge (Aug. 26 and Oct. 9, 1800). 
"Poor Alfred! Pye has been at him too!" lamented Byron {English Bards, 406 n.); 
and, indeed, not only Cottle and Pye, but Blackmore in 1723, James Montgomery about 
1786, John Fitchett between 1808 and 1834, R. P. Knight in 1823, and M. T. Sadler in 
1842, tried their hands at epics on Alfred. 



EPIC POETRY: COTTLE 299 

of every requisite for sublime poetry." ^ A vigorous reply to this 
criticism makes the long preface to the second edition of the poem 
(1804) more interesting and important than the work itself .^ Cottle's 
chief concern was the 'impress on the heart.' "My primary desire," 
he explained, "has been, to please . . . him, or her, who seeks not to 
repress every spontaneous emotion, and who deems it no degrada- 
tion, to obey the impulse which prompts the glowing cheek, or the 
falHng tear." ^ For one of this bias, and particularly if he has only 
the humble gifts of a Cottle, heroic poetry is hardly a suitable me- 
dium. In simple narrative, descriptive, and domestic scenes Alfred 
is often pleasing, but its epic flights usually end in the sentimentality 
and ridiculous rant of melodrama: 

"Monsters, lie there! " he cried, as thro' their hearts 
He plunged his crimson blade.^ 

These contrasting aspects of Alfred, which are equally marked in 
the Fall of Cambria (a story of the conquest of Wales by Edward I), * 
show that Cottle is a transition figure, that he combines the defects 
of Glover with some of the virtues of the lake poets. He was prob- 
ably influenced more by the blank- verse epics of Southey — the 
first of which he himself published — than by the Lyrical Ballads or 
the other early pieces of Wordsworth, few of which are unrimed.^ 

1 Enlarged ed., XXXV. 2,9. 

^ Cottle censured those who "erroneously supposed that sublimity consisted more 
in the expression than in the thought," and cleverly rewrote one of the speeches in his 
poem as it would appear in the typical epic of the period. Of the rewritten passage — 
which is not exaggerated — he said justly: "There is not one appeal to the breast. It 
is the language of imbecility, not of passion. The images are far-fetched, and such as 
would never occur to a man, in the situation . . . nor be adopted by any one who either 
felt himself, or expected to make his Reader feel. The ideas are wholly of a cold and 
general nature, without being, in the slightest degree, calculated to arrest the attention 
or impress the heart." "For my own part," he declared, "I have endeavoured to ex- 
press the language of Nature, and in every dubious point, have consulted alone my own 
heart." These quotations are taken from the American reprint of the second edition 
(Newburyport, 1814, pp. 16-19 passim). 

^ lb. 32. Or, in the words of the Critical Review (new arr., xxxi. 161), Cottle "strives 
rather to melt the heart, than to nerve the arm of heroism." 

^ vi. 36-7 (of the American reprint; the first edition has no "Monsters"). 

* More than half a century earlier, in 1749, Richard Rolt had exclaimed, 

Cambria, thou! unnoted pass 
By the Pierian train? Forbid it heav'n ! 
and in order to avoid such a calamity had written the three books of his Cambria, in 
which " the Muse . . . fondly . . . assay'd To rove the flow'ry Heliconian round (i. 3-4, 
iii. 448-50). This atrocious performance, which reached a second edition the same 
year, is lost in an "amfractuous maze" (iii. 62) of the history and description of Wales. 
Rolt also published in 1749 the 385 lines of his slightly less Miltonic Poem to the Memory 
of Sir W. W. Wynne. 

^ It would seem as if the author of Alfred must also have known and have been in- 



300 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Southey was certainly much better known to the publisher-poet 
than was Wordsworth, and his Modoc has a number of things in 
common with the Fall of Cambria other than the fact that it deals 
with Wales in the early days. He would also have been more in 
sympathy with Cottle's deliberate preaching of morality and reli- 
gion,^ and with his external Miltonisms, which, particularly in the 
heroic passages, are more marked than in Wordsworth's work.^ 

Another friend of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey, as well- 
meaning as Cottle and much abler, but in some respects as ridiculous, 
likewise mistook himself for a poet. This was John Thelwall, whose 
enthusiasm for the French Revolution and for liberty of all kinds re- 
sulted in his imprisonment and made him a source of anxiety to the 
friends of the lake poets. "But neither the grated chambers of the 
Tower, nor the noxious dungeons of Newgate," their prisoner in- 
forms us, "were unconscious to the visitations of the Muse," ^ with 
the result that freedom received the additional tribute of a "Na- 
tional and . . . Constitutional Epic," The Hope of Albion, or Edwin of 
Northumbria (1801). The work was apparently never completed, 
and, as the parts that were written failed to satisfy even their com- 
placent author's easy standards, only the plan and some specimens 
of the verse reached the public. The "action," we learn, is "heroic; 
the form Epic — after the models of classical antiquity — tho ap- 
proaching more to the plan of the Odyssey than of the Iliad. . . . The 
consummation of the action is the estabUshment of the EngUsh 
Constitution on the broad bases of civil and religious Liberty." ^ In 
his egotistic and pompous autobiography Thelwall says of himself, 

fluenced by Romaine Joseph Thorn, who at the time when Southey, Coleridge, and 
Cottle were living at Bristol sang the praises of his city in a poem entitled Bristolia 
(1794). Cottle would have liked Thorn's sentimental but simply-expressed pastoral 
tale, Lodon and Miranda (1799), and the praise of religion and virtue in his Retirement 
(1793). One cannot be sure, however, that he would have approved of his Howe Tri- 
umphantl an Heroic Poem (1794), in which, according to the Critical Review (new arr., 
xiii. 112), "Mr. Thorn mounts upon heroic stilts, and sings the glories of the naval 
victory of the first of June, in what, we suppose, he himself calls blank verse." 

1 "I have endeavoured," declares Cottle in the preface to the first edition of Alfred, 
"to support the cause of Religion and Virtue, in comparison of which, all other com- 
mendation I esteem of little value." 

2 In the preface to the second edition of the Fall of Cambria he affirms, — what is 
obviously the truth, — "I have not aimed at the stately march of Milton"; and it is 
probable he did not realize that his inversions, parentheses, and his use of adjectives 
for adverbs were derived ultimately if not directly from Paradise Lost. For his Mal- 
vern, see above, p. 254. 

' Memoir prefixed to his Poems chiefly written in Retirement (1801), p. xxix. 

* Thelwall's Poetical Recreations of the Champion (1822), 235. Several pages of 
extracts from the Hope of Albion which do not appear in the Poems in Retirement are 
given in the Recreations. 



EPIC POETRY: THELWALL 30I 

that he sought his "accustomed solace in the exuberant descriptions 
of Thomson, or the sublime pathos of the Bard, who 

Into the Heaven of Heavens presum'd to soar." i 

In Milton, however, he found more than solace, for he borrowed from 
Comus and Allegro in his Fairy of the Lake^ and introduced the style, 
language, and some of the phrases of Paradise Lost into his epic. 
His use of "the demon gods Of Scandinavia," who make up the 
"machinery" of the Hope of Albion, also shows the influence of 
Milton; for he pictures them as "that rebel rout" which fell with 
Satan 

when, ambition-fir'd, he sought 
To quell the omnipotent.'^ 

An extract, though not sufficient, as Thelwall said of another pas- 
sage, "to illustrate in any degree the conduct and texture of the 
Poem, as an epic whole," ^ will at least give an idea of its style, and 
especially of its use of northern mythology, one of its few interesting 
features : 

Thee, Frea! thee they praise, embrothel'd queen 
Of wanton dalliance! and thy warrior spouse, 
Asgardian Woden, in his Hall of Shields, 
Horrid with blood; and cloud compelling Thor 
(Fruit of your loves connubial) and the rest 
Who, with septemviral sway, with magic rites, 
And impious festivals, alternate shar'd 
Diurnal homage.* 

The rant and sentimentaHty of George Skene's not uninteresting 
legendary tale of the Scottish islands, Donald Bane (1796), "an 
Heroic Poem in three books, "should have secured it some popularity, 
particularly as the work was praised and quoted at length in the 
Monthly Review} Its markedly Miltonic style, too, though it was 

1 Poems in Retirement, p. xii. On page ix we are told that he "devoured with in- 
satiable avidity Pope's translation of Homer, and committed several hundred verses 
to memory," — which shows that Thelwall, like many others, belonged both to the 
"school of Milton" and to the "school of Pope." 

2 ii. 153-4, 95, loo-ioi {ib. pp. 189, 187), 
^ Poetical Recreations , 2^0. 

* ii. 162-9. Thelwall wrote a number of other blank-verse poems, more conversa- 
tional than his epic but somewhat influenced by Paradise Lost, particularly in the fre- 
quent use of parentheses. The 246 lines of Miltonic blank verse which he published in 
1805 a^s the Trident of Albion, an Epic Effusion, undoubtedly form an effusion, but as 
they tell no story their sole epic quahty seems to be pomposity. Four Unes from Milton 
appear on the title-page of his Poems written in Close Confinement (1795), and some 
years later he had the inmates of his school for stammerers recite Comus (see Crabb 
Robinson's Diary, Dec. 27, 1815). 

* Enlarged ed. , xxiv. 49-56. 



302 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

sharply criticized for being, "like that of Cowper [!]... often af- 
fectedly stately, studiously inverted, and habitually inharmonious," 
should have found favor, especially if it describes many heroes like 
this one : 

On his polished brow 

The shield of valour shone; his eye contained 

Benevolence, and seemed to swim in tears 

Of pity for the sorrows of mankind, 

Save in the rage of battle when he fought, 

Heroic ardour breathing. 

Yet Skene's ambitious effort appears to have attracted no more at- 
tention than did Samuel Wilcocke's Britannia,^ which was issued a 
few months later and was so little known that within four years an- 
other epic was published with the same title. 

This far better poem, one of the best of its kind that the century 
gave birth to, came from the pen of John Ogilvie in 1801. It is a 
sumptuous folio of six hundred and thirty pages, and is equally 
grand if not grandiose in its style, which, owing to frequent inver- 
sions and the omission of many words that would normally be ex- 
pressed, is apt to be jerky. Though it is too long and deals with a 
subject too difficult for Ogilvie's limited powers, though it follows the 
epic conventions and makes no pretence to reaHsm either of action or 
of expression, yet it is as free from rant, pose, and bombast as could 
be expected, and succeeds in being extremely Miltonic without being 
absurd. Both the characters and the action show largeness and 
nobility of conception, and the poem as a whole is dignified, re- 
strained, and often admirably expressed. The influence of Paradise 
Lost is quite as apparent in the diction as in the style, a state of 
affairs which might be expected in view of Ogilvie's ideas on the 
subject. In his opinion, a writer of blank verse "ought to give par- 
ticular attention" to "preventing the language of the Poet from de- 
generating into the tameness of prose." Yet he admitted that "to 
maintain the poetic idiom at all times, in executing so comprehen- 
sive a plan as that of the Epopoea," was "almost impossible."^ 
How hard he tried may be judged from this passage : 

^ Wilcocke seems to have intended to write a "poetical heroic history of his coun- 
try" (ib. 454), but the eighty-three pages that he pubUshed did not finish the Roman 
period. Both his style and diction are unmistakably Miltonic, and he borrows at 
least one passage from Paradise Lost (see ib. 457). This work and Donald Bane I know 
only from the review. 

2 "A Critical Dissertation on Epic Machinery," Britannia, 43-4. In the fifty-two 
closely printed pages of this "Dissertation," Ogilvie defended the use of "machinery" 
against Lord Kames and William Hayley. 



EPIC POETRY: OGILVIE 303 

Some emanation from the orb of day, 

Fraught with his purest radiance, seem'd to float 

Along the empyrean; but the fiend 

Mark'd, on th' effulgence, spreading, as it moved 

Onward in majesty serene, the sons 

Of heaven enthroned; and nearer as it came. 

Beheld the light of panoply divine.^ 

Ogilvie's debt to Paradise Lost, which is clear enough from these 
lines, was not limited to matters of expression. His subject, the 
establishment by Brutus of a Trojan colony in Britain, may well 
have been suggested to him by Milton's plan to compose a work on 
the same theme, and his "machinery" is frankly derived from the 
Christian epic.^ In his second, third, and fourth books (which are laid 
in hell), Satan, a commanding figure with a "deeply scarred" front, 
assumes his throne and hears a fallen spirit recount his unsuccessful 
attempts to keep Brutus from Britain. In the other sixteen books 
Satan stirs up the giant inhabitants of the island to resist the Trojans 
(who are assisted by Milton's Ithuriel and other good angels), 
with the result that, in the many battles which follow, the powers of 
good and evil figure in much the same way as do the Greek deities 
in the Iliad. The bulkiness of the work, its publication in remote 
Aberdeen, the reputation of its author's other poems (which was 
deservedly poor^), all stood in the way of its becoming widely 
known; yet it is hard to see why a piece that maintains a high level 
throughout, and that has passages as good as the following, should 
have been utterly disregarded by its own and by later ages : 

Oblivious Lethe slowly winds 
His tide in silence onwards. — On its bank 
Glimmer the flitting lights that in the stream 
Shine dim, and mournful; glides the sleepy wave 
Stirr'd by no breath, save when remote, the wail 
Of Spirits pent within the gulph of fire, 
Comes lingering o'er the waste.* 

1 Page 606. Ogilvie probably took from Paradise Lost a number of his unusual 
words, like "massy," "adamantine," "compeers," "panoply," etc., as he almost cer- 
tainly did the expressions "world of waters" (pp. 54, 59, cf. P. L., iii. 11), "to rest 
Your wearied virtue" (p. 61, cf. P. L., i. 319-20), "a solitary void . . . received us" 
(p. 153, cf. P. L., ii. 438-9), "horrent arms" (p. 622, cf. P.L., ii. 513), as well as the 
reference to Uriel throned in the sun (p. 149, cf. P. L., iii. 621-53). 

* See above, p. 302, n. 2. * See pp. 395-7 below. 

* Pages 90-91. Most of the critics spoke slightingly of it, and the Monthly Review 
(enl. ed., xxxvii. 361, 364) boldly declared: "The machinery and classical allusions of 
Dr. Ogilvie have the same resemblance to the verse of Homer and Milton, which a 
leaden statue, fresh from Piccadilly, bears to the sculpture of Phidias or Praxiteles. . . . 
We have found it much too long; and we apprehend that few persons will be able to 
accompUsh a progress through the whole." 



304 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

The diffuseness and fondness for long speeches which mark most 
epics of the early nineteenth century are particularly wearisome in 
the heavy contribution that John Fitzgerald Pennie made to the 
form. Pennie 's quasi-autobiographic Tale of a Modern Genius (1827) 
shows that he was poor, precocious, ambitious, and vain, and his 
epics make it equally clear that, although he had gifts, he was no 
poet but mistook the desire to write for the power. As his taste was 
none of the best, he ornamented his works with such pretentious ex- 
pressions as "the gem-wreath of regahty" (the crown), "the colos- 
sean thunderbolt of war," and with such conventional pictures of 
nature — for which he shows no real love — as 

While the sun 
Gilds with refulgence sweet the azure vault, 
And paints the landscape with a thousand flow'rs.* 

The first of his two epics, the Royal Minstrel (1817), narrates the 
life of David from his shepherd boyhood to his coronation.^ Satan, 
Moloch, Belial, and the witch of Endor, who constitute the "ma- 
chinery," hold councils much like those in Paradise Lost, and in one 
of these Belial suggests, as in Paradise Regained, that they "set 
women in the eye of" their intended victim.^ If there remains any 
doubt as to the author's debt to Milton, it will be dispelled by the 
numerous verbal borrowings scattered through the twelve books of 
this poem and the twelve of his next epic, Rogvald, which appeared 
six years later.'* The plot of this second work is complicated; for 

' Rogvald, p. 266; Royal Minstrel, pp. 87, 89. Another of the jewels that grace 
Rogvald is the Hne, "With pity's tear-drop, gemmed the iron gyves" (p. 89). Though 
Pennie's diction is often pompous and amusing, it shows that he sought for unhack- 
neyed expressions which have color and connotative value. Many of his unusual words 
either come direct from Milton or are of the Miltonic kind. He is particularly fond of 
compound epithets. 

^ It is likely that Pennie was acquainted with William Sotheby's Said (1807), an 
unrimed epic shorter and better than his own, which covers the same ground. There is 
nothing striking about this poem (which, in spite of Byron's sneer that it went only 
"from Stationer's Hall to Grocer's Stall," was reprinted in America); yet, aside from 
a style as jerky and unmistakably Miltonic as this (p. 46) , it is not bad : 
Seen afar, amidst the pomp, 

Gorgeously mail'd, but more by pride of port 

Known, and superiour stature, than rich trim 

Of war and regal ornament, the King, 

Thron'd in triumphal car, with trophies grac'd. 

Stood eminent. 
For Sotheby's Tour through Wales, see p. 263 above. 

^ Argument of book viii; cf. P. i?.,ii. 153. 

* A few of these may be quoted. From the Royal Minstrel: "Sabaean odours" (p. 
32, cf. P. L., iv. 162), "bank damask'd with flow'rs" (p. zi^ cf. P. L., iv. 334), "oaten 
reed" (p. 60, cf. Comus, 345), "flaunting woodbine" (p. 316, cf. Contus, 545); 



EPIC POETRY: PENNIE 305 

Rogvald, the leader of the forces that dethrone the English king 
Ethelred, is the accepted lover of Elburga (whom the king seeks to 
marry) and in the end proves to be the son of the neglected queen. 
Rhetorical, melodramatic, and even absurd as the poem often is, it 
has a kind of splendor and is more interesting and unusual than 
most of the works we have been examining. It also gains picturesque- 
ness by describing barbaric scenes like the immolation of wife, chil- 
dren, and horses on the funeral pyre of a great prince, and by using 
Scandinavian deities as "machinery." Pennie draws from the elder 
Edda and from Mallet's Northern Antiquities, but he fails to catch 
the Norse spirit, as may be judged from the following description of 
the gods going forth to battle : 

Chariots of chrysolite and gleaming steel, 
With barbed horse and rider sheathed in mail, 
Stood with terrific grandeur flame-involved. 
Above the glittering files, in pomp, was seen 
Intrepid Tyr, the bravest of the gods; 
Towering in radiant panoply, he seemed 
A moving rock of diamond! — Vali too, 
The son of Rinda, and that lovely god 
Uller, were seen all glorious on the plain.' 

By some whom storms had haply on its shores 

Night-founder'd 
(p. 3, cf. Comus, 483, and P. L., i. 204); 

Beam'd like a meteor waving on the winds 
(p. 4,cf. P. Z,.,i. 537); 

Others apart 

In calmer consultation sat retir'd 
(p. 7, cf. P. Z,.,ii. 557); 

Nor orator of ancient Greece, nor Rome, 

The seat of eloquence, when in her height 

Of pow'r and wide dominion, could compare 
(p. 17, cf. P. L.,ix. 670-72); 

Myrrh and cassia, nard and balm, 

Flung the blest odours of Arabia's gales 
(p. 107, cf. P. L., iv. 162-3, V. 292-3); 

Compos'd of lovelier flow'rs than Proserpine 

Let fall from Dis's iron-shafted car 

When Ceres sought her through the world in vain 
(p. 317, cf. P. L., iv. 269-72). In two other cases (see pp. 435, 438) the author himself 
points out Miltonic parallels, and in the fifth line of book iii he refers to Milton. 

From Rogvald: "arched window, dight With storied pane" (p. s^,ci.Penseroso, 159); 
"irriguous vale" (pp. 56, 167, cf. P. L., iv. 255); "eyelids of the morn"(p. 104, cf. 
Lycidas, 26); "bedropped with" (p. 120, cf. P. L., vii. 406, x. 527); "Hymen, saffron- 
robed" (p. 154, cf . Allegro, 1 25-6) ; " fleecy skirts" of a cloud (p. 250, cf . P. L. , v. 187) ; 
"giant brood" (p. 25i,cf. P. L.,i. 576); " bold emprize " (p. 283,CowM5,6io,andP. L., 
xi. 642); "spicy woods Of Araby the blest" (p. 323, cf. P. L., iv. 162-3). 
* Page 249. 



3o6 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

In this use of Scandinavian deities for "machinery" Pennie may 
have been influenced by Thelwall's Hope of Albion, or by two later 
works, the Earl of Carysfort's Revenge of Guendolen (1810, privately 
printed 1786) and Sir WilHam Drummond's Odin (1817), All four 
writers were pretty certainly stimulated by Gray's two Norse odes, 
and at least one, Carysfort, was "led by the notes to the last Canto 
of Mr. Hayley's Essay on Epic Poetry, to try the effect of the 
northern mythology in a composition of the narrative kind." ^ The 
Earl's story, however, which deals with the successful revolt of Queen 
Guendolen, divorced by the mythical EngHsh king Locrine in order 
that he might marry his captive Estrildis (their child is Sabra, the 
Sabrina of Comus), seems to have been taken from Milton's History 
of Britain} The poem was probably thought too short — it contains 
less than 2600 lines — to be termed an epic, but, as the following 
passage will show, it has all the heroics and Miltonisms that were 
regarded as necessary in such a work : 

And now two chiefs of force immense, whose spears 
Wide-wasting had with many an inroad gor'd 
The front of battle, in their sanguine course, 
Approach, and adverse stand with threat'ning arms.' 

Some of the scenes in the Revenge of Guendolen — an incantation, 
for example, and a picture of the hall of Odin — are striking but 
reveal only slight familiarity with Scandinavian mythology. In this 
they differ widely from the pictures in Sir William Drummond's 
poem, which tells how Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates, after being 
defeated with his father by the Romans, moved northward and, in 
the guise of their deity Odin, became the ruler of the Germanic 
tribes. Drummond's work may have been suggested by a remark in 
the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, that the legend of the his- 
torical Odin (which is found in the prose Edda, the Heimskringla, 
and in earher works), "by deducing the enmity of the Goths and 
Romans from so memorable a cause, might supply the noble ground- 
work of an Epic Poem." ^ If so, Gibbon would have taken some 
satisfaction in the Latinic diction and the lofty, rhetorical style in 
which Odin is written, — in such a passage as this, for example: 

^ Dramatic and Narrative Poems (1810), ii. 4. 
2 lb. 

* Page 113. The battle "with many an inroad gor'd" is from Paradise Lost, vi. 
386-7, and "the pond'rous spear Seems like a pine ... on Norweyan hills" (p. 123) is 
from the first book (lines 284-93) of the same epic. 

* Second ed. (1776), vol. i, ch. x, n. 12. My attention was called to this reference 
by Mr. F. E. Farley's admirable Scandinavian Influences in the English Romantic 
Movement (Boston, 1903). 



EPIC POETRY: DRUMMOND 307 

Now on the verge they stood of a broad sea 
Tempestuous. In the midst the snake-like God 
Of slimy Mignard, (his lithe body coil'd 
In many a spiral fold voluminous,) 
Uplifted o'er the wave his crested head 
Majestic. Serpent old! believed of yore, 
Where Nile and Ganges flow, to circulate 
The ocean-stream that girts the universe.^ 

The reader will probably agree with the Eclectic Review that 
Drummond's style "is obviously formed upon the model of the 
Paradise Lost"; and if he turns to the work itself he may add with 
the critic, "We are better pleased, however, with the general re- 
semblance to Milton, which his [Drummond's] learning and classical 
taste enable him to keep up, in erudite allusion, and richness of orna- 
ment, than with his close imitation of particular passages." ^ It is 
doubtful whether, so late as 181 7, any large part of the public shared 
the critic's pleasure in a style "obviously formed upon the model of 
the Paradise Lost." At any rate, though Drummond was a diplomat 
and scholar of repute, and though he had the first four books of his 
epic sumptuously printed, they found so little favor that he pub- 

1 Page 103. This extract gives far too favorable an impression of the poem, which 
is monotonous and devoid of poetic power. Much of it reads as if each line were com- 
posed without reference to any other. 

2 New series, viii. 87. Among these "close imitations" are the speeches at the 
council (pp. 60-72, cf. P. L., ii. 1-467); the reference to "the King of shades . . . 
With sin and death, his Hell-born offspring" (p. 11 1, cf. P. L., ii. 746-89); the list of 
heathen deities (pp. 111-12, cf. P. L., i. 376-522); the phrases "clad with vines" 
(p. 1 23, from P. L.,i. 410, of a valley in each case), "sea-girt isles" (p. i^i,iiova.Cornus, 
21), "Nature, best instructress" (p. 135, cf. Comus, 377), "sky-tinctured plumage" 
(p. 160, cf. P. L., V. 285, of wings in each case); and the following passages: 

For now the rebel Satraps hemm'd him round; 
Their serried ranks drawn up in close array, 
An iron front, horrent with bristling spears 

(p. 59, cf. P. L., i. 547-8, ii. 511-13, iv. 979-8o) ; 

Distinct he shone in radiant panoply, 
Refulgent mail, gorgeous, inlaid with gold 

(p. 59, see also p. 160, and cf. P. L., vi. 526-7, 760-61); 

When purple to the sea her fountains ran 
Ensanguined 

(p. 73, cf. P. L., 1.450-52); 

Knit with Spring and Autumn, hand in hand, 
Danced round the smiling Year 

(p. 116, cf. P. L., iv. 267-8, v. 394-5); 

The blear illusions of her magic spells 

(p. 150, cf. Comus, 154-5). As for diction, Drummond has words like "mortiferous," 
"refulgent," "relucent," "panoply," " colorific," "insentient," "darkling," "hirsute," 
"tauriform," "malefic," "monarchal" (the last seven are on two pages, 83 and 112). 



3o8 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

lished no more. By most readers and critics this tiresome first part 
was ignored; but the Eclectic Review, which could spare only five 
pages of the same number to condemn Manfred as "scarcely worth 
being transmitted from the Continent" and as not likely to "raise 
Lord Byron's reputation," gave Odin thirteen pages of commenda- 
tion! ^ 

Teutonic mythology is also employed to some extent in H. H. 
Milman's Samor, Lord of the Bright City (1818), which contains a 
scene with the Valkyrie and a human sacrifice but which as a whole 
is far from suggesting the strangeness or the terse vigor of the Old 
Norse. Instead, it reminds one of Southey, particularly of his 
Modoc, since its hero wanders about England in the days of Vorti- 
gern rousing the British against the Saxon invaders. Milman termed 
his piece "an heroic poem," but the dominant note is not epic, for 
we hear more of Samor's piety, his sufferings, his feelings for his 
murdered family, than of his heroism; furthermore, several love- 
stories are introduced as episodes and there are frequent morahzings 
and descriptions of nature. Although begun when its author was a 
schoolboy of eighteen and practically finished during his under- 
graduate years at Oxford, the poem has none of the fire or abandon 
of youth, but is rather what might be expected from the mature 
Milman who won merited laurels as the historian of the Jews and of 
Latin Christianity, as the editor of Gibbon, and as the dean of St. 
Paul's. It is dignified without being bombastic, often impressive, 
generally pleasing, and it reveals a love of the quieter aspects of 
nature; but it lacks freshness and Ufe, is too long, contains too much 
talk and too little action, and such action as it has is episodic rather 
than progressive. To Southey it was "a work of great power," but 
charged with "a perpetual stretch and strain of feeling. . . . With 
less poetry," he declared, "Samor would have been a better poem." ^ 
Although within a year of its publication it not only reached a 
second edition but was reprinted in America, and though it is un- 
doubtedly better than most of its predecessors, more natural, less 
pompous and rhetorical, yet it has a curious stiltedness and conven- 
tionality of expression that give it an academic air. Later Milman 
made some attempt to correct these faults, which he attributed in 
part to "the ambition of creating that which . . , the language still 

1 Newseries,viii. 66,90. 

^ Letter to C. H. Townshend, April 12, 1818; see also his letter to Scott, March 11, 
1819. Samor was harshly criticized in the North American Review, ix. 26-35, a-iid the 
Quarterly Review, xix. 328-47. Milman later became so frequent a contributor to the 
Quarterly that Byron, who said "The fellow has poesy in him" (letter to J. Murraj', 
Sept. 12, 1821), mentioned him in the squib "Who killed John Keats?" 



I 



EPIC POETRY: MILMAN — WALL 309 

wants — narrative blank verse. The Miltonic versification," he goes 
on to say, "is the triumph of poetic art; but ... it is too solemn, 
stately, and august for subjects of less grave interest." ^ Inasmuch 
as considerable blank verse less "solemn, stately, and august" and 
better adapted to narration than that of Samor had been written 
before i8r8, this is a somewhat singular defense. How Miltonic the 
poem often is will appear from these lines: 

Him delighted more 
Helvellyn's cloud-wrapt brow to climb, and share 
The eagle's stormy solitude; 'mid wreck 
Of whirlwinds and dire lightnings, huge he stood, 
Where his own Gods he deem'd on volleying clouds 
Abroad were riding, and black hurricane.'* 

One of the most striking instances of the persistence in the nine- 
teenth century of the tastes and methods of the eighteenth is to be 
found in Christ Crucified, "an epic poem in twelve books," by W. E. 
Wall. There is nothing about this ponderous work, whether in 
style, diction, plan, or contents, to indicate that its five hundred and 
fifteen pages were written later than Glover's Leonidas (1737) ; yet it 
appeared in 1833 and stands in the Harvard Library next to In Me- 
moriam! Like many eighteenth-century epics, it employs the "ma- 
chinery" of Paradise Lost, — Satan and the fallen angels, councils 
in hell at which various evil spirits propose plans, a Miltonic Deity 
justifying himself in Miltonic but unchristian speeches to a host of 
angels who chant his praises, etc., etc. Innumerable details and 
phrases are also taken from Milton, as are the turgid style and the 
absurd diction. But let the poem speak for itself: 

Beneath, upon a throne of awful height, 
(As 'twere to emulate the Heaven of God,) 
Fram'd as of solid darkness, Satan sate 
Resplendent ! 

In the realms 
Ethereal, above th' empyrean high, 
Thron'd in sun-dazzling glory, compass'd bright 
With Seraphim, saw the Almighty Sire, 
(From his high optic hill of Providence 
Foreseeing secrets deep of hoary time,) 
His Son belov'd advancing to his death. 
Immediate from heav'n's argent clouds proceeds 
The voice of God.* 

1 Works (1839), vol. ii, p. xii. These "introductory observations" are contradictory, 
confused, and confusing, and imply a much more thorough revision of the poem than 
Milman actually made. 

2 lb. 25. * i. 682-s; iii. 1324-32. 



3IO THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

The Miltonic garb in which Wall clothed his poem seems even 
stranger when it appears in the far better work, Attila, King of the 
Huns, which the distinguished dean of Manchester, William Herbert, 
published as late as 1838.^ Herbert was a scholar of wide reading in 
several literatures; he wrote considerable Latin, besides some Greek, 
Italian, and Norwegian verse, made translations from the Greek, 
Spanish, German, and Icelandic,^ and was an eminent naturalist. 
With his epic he published a long "historical treatise" on the same 
subject, which, together with his numerous notes, indicates that he 
could have quoted chapter and verse for every detail in the poem. 
As a result of the years of close but varied study that had preceded 
it, Attila is stiffened throughout with learned allusions and with 
names famed in history or romance, features which give it much 
of its Miltonic character. Yet, just as he took over the character 
of Satan, Herbert must have deliberately adopted the manner of 
Paradise Lost in order to gain the grandeur and impressiveness for 
which he strove. He could be simple when he wished, but for his 
epic his models were not Wordsworth or Tennyson, since his ear was 
"cloy'd Unto satiety" with the "honied strains" and "meretricious 
gauds of modern song." ^ He "walk'd" rather with "Melesigenes 
and Maro," and with "British Milton," who drew from his "vocal 

shell" 

Numbers sonorous, fraught with science deep; 
Such as majestic Greece had wondering heard, 
Nor Freedom's proudest sons disdain'd to own.^ 

It was undoubtedly from "British Milton" that he learned to use 
such words as "besprent," "darkling," "meteorous," "panoply," 
"adamant," "irascent," "ingulph'd," "glebe," "confusive," "egres- 
sion," "battailous," "piation," "minaciously," "Riphaean," "Vul- 

1 In his Works (1842) the title is Attila, or the Triumph of Christianity. 

2 Interest in the myths and customs of the early Teutonic peoples influenced Herbert, 
as it had Cottle, Thelwall, Pennie, Carysfort, and Drummond, in choosing the subject 
of his epic; but his knowledge of the field was far more profound that theirs. His 
Select Icelandic Poetry, translated, -with notes (1804-06), is said to contain "the first 
adequate illustration of ancient Scandinavian literature which had appeared in Eng- 
land " {Diet. Nat. Biog.), and his Hedin, Helga (which shows the influence of Scott and 
Byron), Brynhilda, and Sir Ebba are all based on the Old Norse. 

* Farewell (appended to A ttila) , 93-4 ,117. 

* Farewell, 119-20; Written in Somersetshire (1801), 81-4. It seems to have been 
his admiration for Milton that led him to make Satan show Attila a vision of the world 
similar to that with which, in Paradise Regained, he tempted Christ {Attila, ii. 285-696, 
P. R., iii. 267-346); to introduce Sin as she is pictured in Paradise Lost (ii. 245-7, cf. 
P. L., ii. 648-54, 746-67) ; to refer to one of Milton's Latin poems (in a note to ii. 315); 
and to borrow the phrases "arrowy sleet" (i. 236, cf. P. i?., iii. 324), "odours . . . From 
blest Arabia" (ii. 62-3, cf. " Sabaean sweets," iii. 457, and P. L., iv. 162-3), "hurl'd 
headlong from the etherial cope" (ii. 242, cf. P. L., i. 45, of Satan in each case), "no 



EPIC POETRY: HERBERT 311 

canian," "Cimmerian," "Erecthean," and expressions like "empy- 
real concave," " celestial fulgor radiated." How much the style owes 
to Paradise Lost may be judged from the account of Attila's tomb: 

Nigh that marmorean dwelling of the dead, 
Kaiazo, where revered Cadica lies 
Entomb 'd with Cheva and Balamber old, 
At dead of night the monarch was inhumed 
With secret rites mysteriously; and he. 
Who lived in darkness, was in darkness given 
Dust unto dust. Within his vault they placed 
Arms of the slain, by him in battle won. 
Trappings o'erlaid with gems, and plumed casques, 
And standards manifold, from Greece and Rome, 
From the famed Avars torn, or those who tread 
Far Thule, and the sons of gloomy Dis 
In Druid Gaul.i 

It should be apparent from this extract that Herbert is no ordinary 
versifier. Although his epic was ' wafted ' fiar sooner than he dreamed 

To that Lethean pool, where earthly toils 
Sink unregarded in forgetfulness,^ 

it is by no means lacking in imaginative and poetic power. Original 
or inspired it is not, for Herbert's strength lay in the direction of 
translation and imitation; and in this instance the imitation is too 
palpable. Yet Attila is dignified, restrained, always in good taste, 
and usually both rich and impressive. It has too little story, and 
that little moves too slowly; but for a heroic work in the grand style 
it is both readable and enjoyable, and must be regarded as one of the 
best, as it is one of the last, blank-verse epics in Enghsh,^ 

other deem Than" (ii. 257-8, cf. P. R., iv., 44-5), "self-balanced spheres" (ii. 345, of. 
P. L., vii. 242), "high advanced" (iv. 35, cf. P. L., i. 536, v. 588, of a banner in each 
case), "that Sirbonian swamp" (iv. 175, cf. P. L., ii. 592), "flew diverse" (iv. 315, 
cf. P. L.,x. 284)," "smit with love Of" (v. 203-4, cf. P- /.., iii. 29), "barbaric silks and 
gold" (x. 90, cf. P. L., ii. 4), "panoply of gold" (xii. 356, cf. P. L., vi. 527, 760-61), 
"umbrage never sere" (Farewell, 118, cf. Lycidas, 2), and the hnes, 

O for the voice of him, 

Who drew the curtain of apocalypse 
(i. 269-70, cf. P. L., iv. 1-2), 

Distance seem'd 

Annihilate, and each minutest shape 

As view'd thro' optic lens. So angels see 
(ii. 293-s, cf. P. L., i. 288, 59). 

^ xii. 314-26. The Miltonic use of proper names in this passage is a favorite device 
with Herbert. 

^ Farewell, 132-4. 

' Herbert wrote six shorter pieces of blank verse (see Bibl. I, 1801 w., 1804 w.,1822, 
1838 w., 1846), which, with the exception of The Christian (1846), are less Miltonic 
th&n A tiila. 



312 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 



1 



Others have, to be sure, been written since. Indeed, the Quarterly 
Review, in an article published in 1852 under the alarming title 
"Recent Epics," remarks, "The course of these stars of the first 
magnitude (we class them by size) is seldom observed, or the world 
would be astonished at the host which keep rising in mist to set in 
darkness." ^ Two of the epics published between 1840 and 1845 that 
the Quarterly discusses use the style and diction of Paradise Lost, and 
two even copy its angels and devils.^ In John Fitchett's King Alfred, 
for example, there are many infernal councils at which Satan ad- 
dresses the 

Powers deathless, progeny of heaven, once slaves;' 

and the fourth book, which "into the Heaven of Heavens presumes," 
pictures Michael with many angels approaching the "sovereign 
throne" to ask a favor and gives the answer of the Almighty. Such 
scenes are brought still closer to Paradise Lost by the decidedly Mil- 
tonic style in which they are described. Here is a sample : 

High in the midst ut)on his sable throne 
Satan majestic sat. His lofty form 
None might discern, save when the sudden gleam 
Of some dark-flaming billow, surging vast. 
Through sinking clouds with momentary flash 
Half shew'd him terrible, and swift-display'd 
A range immense of hideous crowded forms 
Silent awaiting round. The fearful sight 
Seem'd, (if with earthly scene it holds com.pare) 
As when a traveller. . . .* 

King Alfred is an astonishing production in other respects, since its 
forty-eight books include 131,238 lines, which make it "the longest 
poem in the English, or perhaps any other language . . . twice as 
long as the Iliad, the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy, Jerusalem De- 
livered, and Paradise Lost, all added together!" ^ 

The geologist Thomas Hawkins makes no use of the style of 
Paradise Lost for the nine books of his Wars of Jehovah, in Heaven, 
Earth, and Hell (1844), but, according to the Quarterly, he does not 

1 xc. 334. 

2 This does not include Cottle's Alfred and Montgomery's Luther (see pp. 298 above 
and 412 below), which are also considered in the article. 

' iii. 460. ^ iii. 429-38. 

^ Palatine Note-Book (1882, ii. 169), where other information regarding the poem is 
given. It seems that Fitchett was a highly-successful attorney who, after laboring forty 
years over his epic and printing a first version privately between 1808 and 1834, left it 
unfinished. His clerk, Robert Roscoe (son of the biographer of Lorenzo de' Medici), 
"edited "it, added over 2500 lines in bringing it to ' a brief and rapid termination,' 
and published it in 1841-2. For Fitchett's Bewsey, see above, p. 258. 



EPIC POETRY 313 

hesitate to borrow freely from its subject-matter. W. R. Harris, on 
the contrary, in his Napoleon, an Epic Poem in twelve cantos (1845), 
discards the devils but keeps the style of the Puritan work. No 
secret is made of the indebtedness, for he tells us frankly, 

He who now adventurous tardy pours 
Heroic lay, from earliest infancy 
Courted, enamoured, Milton's flowing strain: 
Mute — till a heavenly theme his fancy fired! ' 

Harris was, however, no servile imitator, for by a happy inspiration 
he introduced "sudden bursts of rhyme, varying in length from a 
couplet to a hundred lines," whenever the humor seized him. In 
consequence of many such idiosyncrasies, Napoleon, like the Wars of 
Jehovah and one of the other "recent epics" discussed in the article, 
seems like the work of a somewhat unbalanced mind. 

Aside from the sneers of the Quarterly, these productions apparently 
attracted no attention whatever, and, though similar poems have 
doubtless appeared since, the surprising vitality of the epic tradition 
must have been almost exhausted by 1850. It may be significant 
that in 1855, when Susannah Henderson pubUshed her Olga (the life 
of a Russian empress of the tenth century) she did not term it an 
epic, as she probably would have done fifty years earlier.^ Certainly 
Milman, who composed Samor as a schoolboy, attempted nothing 
of the kind again, and Herbert's Attila, though pubhshed as late as 
1838, was begun much earher, perhaps, like Fitchett's Alfred, soon 
after 1800. The later epics of Southey, like the work of Pennie, 
Drummond, Hawkins, and Harris, are the last manifestations of a 
force almost spent; and Hyperion, though written in 18 18-19 and in 
Miltonic blank verse, was not a part of the literary movement that 
produced the others. 

The epic may, therefore, be said to have been moribund through- 
out the second quarter of the nineteenth century and to have died 
soon after. It has never revived. Occasionally, to be sure, epic 
fragments and even complete poems have been written in subsequent 
years, and in the case of Sohrab and Rustum with no small success; 
but these are "sports" of literary evolution which do not prove any 

1 Quart. Rev., xc. 345. I have not seen this epic or Hawkins's. Hawkins wrote at 
least two other poems, of which I know only the titles, The Lost Angel and the History 
of the Old Adamites (1840) and Prometheus (1850). 

2 In most respects her poem belongs to the preceding century; for it employs con- 
ventional poetic diction, with words like "decidence," "congelations," "appetence," 
"perturbated," and "bold emprize," as well as many other Miltonisms, and jogs along 
in unmistakable though unrimed heroic couplets which have none of the condensed 
brilliance of Pope and make little effort to conceal their lack of inspiration under lofti- 
ness of style. 



314 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

vitality for the form. Arnold's episode is unique in that it is com- 
posed in a blank verse which is heroic without being Miltonic. This 
is not true of Ernest Myers's noble Judgment of Prometheus (1886), 
as the opening lines will show: 

Now through the royal hall, for Heaven's dread Lord 
Wrought by the Fire-king's hand, the assembled Gods, 
Upon the morn appointed, thronging ranged 
Expectant; mute they moved, and took their thrones, 
Gloom on their brows, though Gods; so dark the dread 
Of huge impending battle held their hearts. 
Battle of brother Kings, Heaven and the Sea 
In duel dire, convulsive war of worlds.' 

Classical influences undoubtedly entered strongly into Myers's 
writings, but the fine insight into the character of the earlier poet 
shown in his sonnet on Milton must have borne fruit when he came 
to write the epic fragment.^ 

Another short poem of recent years, more romantic or Hellenistic 
than the Judgment oj Prometheus but one that, like it, might well be 
part of an extended epic, is Alfred Noyes's Last oj the Titans (1908). 
The style of this rich, dignified narrative occasionally recalls that 
of Paradise Lost, as when the chariots rolled 

Their flaming wheels remote, so that they seemed, 

E'en Alioth and Fomalhaut, no more 

Than dust of diamonds in the abysmal gloom; 
or when 

two monstrous bulks arose. 

Mountainous, 
with eyes 

as of wild crimson torches 

Far-sunken in a thick and savage wood, 

Yet imminent; 

or when, as in the opening lines, 

Over what seemed a gulf of glimmering sea, 
Huger than hugest Himalay arose 
Atlas, on weary shoulders heaving dark 
The burden of the heavens.' 

In view of these recent heroic episodes and fragments, it cannot be 
denied that impressive and interesting epic poetry may still be 

' Gathered Poems (1904), 3. 

^ For the sonnet, see ib. 120; notice also 61 (Vallombrosa). The Olympic Hermes (ib. 
41-6) and some of Myers's other brief pieces of blank verse on classical subjects recall 
Paradise Lost in their lofty utterance and their occasional inversions. In his drama on 
the Greek model, The Puritans (1869), Milton is a principal character. 

' Golden Hynde, etc. (N. Y. 1908), 56, 64, 65, 54. 



BURLESQUE POETRY 315 

written. But this is not to say that impressive and interesting epics 
may be written, for all these pieces are short. Would twelve books 
of Sohrah and Rustum be popular? How many persons would read 
the completed Hyperion — or, for that matter, how many read the 
incomplete? Should we enjoy three hundred pages of the Judgment 
oj Prometheus or the Last of the Titans? On this last question some 
light might be expected from the twelve books of Mr. Noyes's 
Drake, an English Epic (1906-8), were not this work romantic 
rather than heroic. The difiference does not, of course, lie in the 
dropping of supernatural machinery and classical subjects, for such 
changes are likely to be made if the form is ever to awake to renewed 
vitality. It is rather that Drake suggests a medieval romance re- 
written by Tennyson, is descriptive and reflective, and lacks the 
directness, the objectivity, and the interest in action which mark the 
Iliad and Paradise Lost. 

Is there, then, no future for the epic? May not another Milton 
arise and give us a work differing perhaps from the poetry of our 
time as much as Paradise Lost did from that of the Restoration? It 
may be. At least such a work, if it is ever written, is likely to violate 
many of our preconceptions.^ There is no certainty that it will be in 
blank verse; it may resemble Don Juan more than it does Hyperion; 
it may even be in prose; perhaps it will follow the lines of Thomas 
Hardy's Dynasts, a drama partly in prose but with more of the epic 
sweep than any other English work of our time. Homers and Miltons 
have never been numerous or predicable, and the non-appearance 
of one of the "giant brood " for two and a half centuries does not 
warrant the belief that they are no more, or prove that a mightier 
Whitman or Masefield may not some day, with a theme like the dis- 
covery and settlement of the western United States, show us that 
the race of heroic poets still lives. 

The Burlesque 

The sublimity and distinctive style of Paradise Lost invite parody, 
and at a time when the poem was widely read and imitated the invi- 
tation was frequently accepted. Some seventy-five humorous poems 
in blank verse have come to my attention, most of which probably 
go back, directly or indirectly, to the first, the Splendid Shilling 
(1701). If Philips's humor is somewhat obvious and deliberate, that 
of his successors is rarely so good, and in consequence has long been 
forgotten; for "the merit of such performances," as Dr. Johnson 

1 As does Mickiewicz's Polish epic, Pan Tadeusz (1834, translated by G. R. Noyes, 
1917). 



3l6 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

said, "begins and ends with the first author." ^ The poems were too 
easy to write to be well written: they are funny, but not funny 
enough. Furthermore, the pentameter and tetrameter couplets had 
developed a terse brilliance that the slower, heavier, and more diffuse 
blank verse of the day could not rival; consequently, men whose 
bent was towards wit or humor usually followed Pope, Swift, and 
Churchill in devoting their energies exclusively to rime. Certainly 
very few flowers of genius were wasted upon the desert air of the 
eighteenth-century burlesque. 

But not much could be expected of works that make so little 
attempt at originality as these humorous pieces in blank verse. 
Practically all of them do the obvious thing, — apply a pompous 
exaggeration of the style of Paradise Lost to humble themes. In exe- 
cution many are passable, but none show anything like the cleverness 
of conception that marks the Rape of the Lock, or " Whistlecraf t's " 
King Arthur, or Don Juan, or the best things in the Anti-Jacobin. 
The extent to which they openly copy Philips is astonishing. Many 
acknowledge either in the titles or in the poems themselves that 
they are "in imitation of the Splendid Shilling,'' and several begin 
as it does, "Happy the man . . . who." Rarely is there so refresh- 
ingly unexpected a turn to this hackneyed opening as in the lines, 

Happy the man! whose well-stor'd shelf contains, 
In various piles, for the whole year compos'd, 
A set of goodly sermons. He nor fears 
Returning Saturday, or next day's toil.^ 

Even the choice of subject was usually suggested by Philips. The 
Splendid Shilling laments not only poverty but the " eternal drought" 
which accompanies it; for the pots of ale which the poet "tipples" 
are, alas, imaginary ! This hint was enough to call forth at least eight 
paeans on liquor from the heavy-drinking bards of the day,^ Wine 
(1708), Gin (1734), A Bacchanalian Rhapsody (1746), Small-beer 
{i'j46),OxfordAle{iTSo),A Tankard of Porter (1760), The Corkscrew 
(1760), Sind Punch (1769). Nor should the solemnly ludicrous pic- 
ture of the orgy after the fox-chase, in Thomson's Autumn (1730),'' be 
forgotten, or two poems on the gout (1756, 1768). PhiHps's "warm- 
ing PufT , . . from Tube as black As Winters Chimney" may have 
suggested the unrimed humorous Verses on Bad Tobacco (1738) and 
The Tobacco-stopper (1760). He had little to say about food, but his 

' "Philips," in Lives (ed. Hill), i. 317. 
^ The Curate's Caution (1794), in Gent. Mag., Ixiv. 365-6. 

3 Philips's Cerealia and Cyder, which also deal with drink, probably had some in- 
fluence. * Lines 492-569. 



BURLESQUE POETRY 317 

followers praised Pudding (1759), Apple Dumpling (1774), Potatoes 
(1786), and Good Eating in general (1772). Money is the theme not 
only of the Splendid Shilling, but of the Sick-bed Soliloquy to an 
Empty Purse (1735), the Empty Purse, a poem in Miltonics (1750)/ 
the Crooked Sixpence (two poems, 1743 and 1802), the Birmingham 
Halpenny (1757), the Copper Farthing (1763), and the Soliloquy on 
the Last Shilling (1773). 

With Philips are also connected several of the humorous pictures 
of school and college life: An Epistle from Oxon (1731), A Day in 
Vacation at College (written in 1750 by the notorious Dr. Dodd), 
Woty's Campanalogia (1761), Mrs. Pennington's Copper Farthing 
(1763), Maurice's School-hoy (1775) and Oxonian (1778),^ Lardner's 
College Gibb (1801), and the none-too-exhilarating Panegyric on 
Oxford Ale (composed in 1748) in which Thomas Warton follows, 
*'in verse Miltonic," 

the matchless bard, whose lay resounds 
The Splendid Shilling's praise. 

Philips is likewise partly responsible for the marked tendency of 
these poems to avoid the elegant society pictured in the Rape of 
the Lock and to condescend to men and things of low estate, a tend- 
ency noticeable in the pieces already mentioned, as well as in 
Poverty (1748), A Louse (1749), The Street (1764), The Old Shoe 
(1770), The Bugs (1773), The Sweepers (1774), The Cat (1796), 
Washing-day (1797), and An Old Pair of Boots (1797). The humor 
is often broad and sometimes vulgar; but in only three instances is 
it, like so much of the facetious rimed verse of the day, really 
indecent. 

The Splendid Shilling is not really mock-heroic, nor are any of the 
other pieces that have been considered; for, although they use the 
grand style in treating lowly themes, they do not, like the Homeric 
Battle of the Frogs and the Mice, Boileau's Lutrin, and Pope's Rape of 
the Lock, parody epic action, speech, or characters. There is, accord- 
ingly, no reason why the unrimed mock-heroics, all but one of which 
are translations,^ should owe anything to Philips. Three are render- 
ings of Edward Holdsworth's popular Muscipula (1709),"* which tells 

^ I know nothing of these two pieces except their titles; they may be under no debt 
to PhiUps, and the first may not even be in blank verse. 

^ Campanalogia is dedicated " to the Society of College- Youths," and seems to deal 
with Ufe at one of the universities. The Copper Farthing, and the School-hoy (which 
Johnson praised, see Maurice's Poems, 1800, p. 23 n.), both sing of the joys and sorrows 
of a schoolboy, and both are closely patterned after the Splendid Shilling. 

' Dr. Frank Sayers's amusing Homeric parody. Jack the Giant-Killer (1803), though 
in blank verse, is not Miltonic. ■* See p. 108 above. 



3l8 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

of the invention of the mouse-trap. The first, published by Daniel 
Bellamy in 1709, is frankly ''in imitation of Milton," and at times 
travesties Paradise Lost as closely as this: 

He ended frowning. . . . 

But One Ycleped Taffy, soon up rose, 

Great Cambria's chiefest Pride, who seem'd alone 

For Dignity compos'd, and high Exploit; 

Both Vulcan and a Senator, whose Tongue 

Dropping down Manna, charming to the Ear, 

With soft, persuasive Accent thus began. 

"If Cheese, most Noble Peers, our Nation's Boast, 

Should be by this intestine Foe destroy'd, 

I dread the Consequence. " ^ 

The second, which appeared anonymously six years later, is likewise 
"done in Milton's stile," but follows Paradise Lost no more closely 
than does the third (the work of John Hoadly) in this passage: 

He spake, and strait the fragments, mouldy scraps, 

Reliques of rapine, monuments of theft, 

High in their sight uprearing, rous'd their rage; 

Now thirst of dire revenge, now lust of fame 

Burns emulous, and fires each Patriot breast; 

Each meditates to Mouse unheard-of fate, 

And ev'ry brain is hamm'ring on a Trap.^ 

If Hoadly 's poem does not call up the figure of "Laughter holding 
both his sides," the heavy humor of Bishop Warburton's version of 
Addison's Latin Battle of the Cranes and Pigmies (1724) certainly 
will not. The announcement in the title that the translation is "in 
imitation of Milton's style" is scarcely necessary in view of such 
borrowings as these: "collected in their might; " "Briarius, Titanian, 
or Earth-born; " "involv'd in Smoak;" 

Hurl'd to, and fro, with Jaculation dire. 

Above the rest. 
In Shape and Gesture proudly eminent, 
Stood like a Giant. . . . 

.... his honest Face 
Deep Scars of hostile Tallons had intrench'd.' 

Less savoury but more amusing than any of these translations is 
a description of the war between Pulex and Pediculus (a flea and a 

1 Bellamy's Dramatic Pieces, etc. (1739), 21, third pagination; of. P. L., ii. 106-20. 

2 "Dodsley's Miscellany" (1758), v. 262. The translation was made in 1737. 

3 Tracts by Warburton, etc. (ed. Samuel Parr, 1789), 60 (cf. P. L., ix. 673), 61 (cf. 
P. L., i. 198-9, of the Titans' war against Jove in each case), 61 (cf. P. L., i. 236-7), 
61 (cf. P. L., vi. 665), 59 (cf. P. L., i. 589-91, 600-601). 



BURLESQUE POETRY: WOTY 319 

louse), which William Woty published in 1770 as The Pediculaiad, 
or Bvckram Triumphant. Although Woty disclaims the muse 

Who from the Aonian mount ... 

Bore our great Milton with advent'rous wing, 

invoking instead the "great Sartoria, cross-legg'd Goddess" of his 
tailor-hero Buckram, he travesties Paradise Lost in these lines: 

High on his shop-board in exalted state 
Pre-eminent sat Buckram, full of thought, 
And wan with care. Upon his faded brow, 
Entrench'd with many a frown, pale Discontent 
Hung lowring. Inward anguish tore his soul 
And deep despair. Thrice he essay'd to speak, 
And thrice his words fell inward, unpronounc'd.^ 

It is in the head of Buckram that "sage Pediculus," who deigns not 
"to inhabit other seat Than the imperial Capitol," has his home, 
although another "citadel . . . galligaskins hight " is the scene of his 
mortal combat with Pulex. The Pediculaiad, like its author's other 
humorous pieces in blank verse, is better than most poems of the 
kind; and, as Woty published a greater number than any one else 
(fourteen in all), he is entitled to the modest distinction of being, 
after Philips, the leading writer in the field.^ To be sure, poets who 
are in general of far more importance composed humorous blank 
verse, — Lady Winchilsea, Gay, Thomson, Somervile, Akenside, 
Cowper, and the laureates Whitehead and Thomas Warton;^ but 
none of their productions Hve or deserve to live, none are even so 
good as the forgotten pieces that parodied the Allegro-Penseroso 
movement.^ For humor, like other things that sparkle, is apt to be- 
come flat with the passing of time. 

One of Woty's productions. The Spouting-Club, was stolen by a 
certain Richard Lewis and published in 1758 as his own work. 
Apparently Lewis did write The Robin Hood Society (1756), " a Satire, 
with notes Variorum, by Peter Pounce," — stupid doggerel designed 

' Works {1770),!. 142-4; cf.P. L.,u. 1-5,1.600-605,619-21. This piece and several 
others by Woty have no suggestion of Philips. Nor has Francis Fawkes's Parody on a 
Passage in Paradise Lost (1761), R. Jephson's Extempore Ludicrous Miltonic Verses 
(1776) or his Burlesque Miltonic (1778), Thomas Maurice's Oxonian (1778, which con- 
tains several borrowings from Paradise Lost), W. O. Lardner's College Gibb (1801), or 
A. C. Schomberg's Bagley (1777, see above, p. 258, n. i). For two parodies of the 
Night Thoughts, see above, p. 159, n. 4. 

^ Woty was joint-editor of the Poetical Caletidar (12 vols., 1763), and author of at 
least eight pieces of serious Miltonic blank verse, three of the Allegro-Penseroso type, 
and four in the meter of the translation from Horace. 

^ See above and below, pp. 15 n. i, 107-8, 140, 363, 392 n. i, 163, 159 n. 4, 317. 

* See below, p. 467. 



320 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

to represent "the Weekly Society for free Enquiry, &c. who meet at 
the sign of the Robin Hood without Temple-Bar, as an assembly of 
illiterate, deistical mechanics, and profligate persons; who indulge 
themselves in an unwarrantable, illegal, abuse of the liberty we 
enjoy, of freely debating upon sacred subjects." ^ The only un- 
rimed political satire of the period seems to be the anonymous 
Paradise Regain' d, or the Battle of Adam and the Fox (1780), an imag- 
inative if not a poetic treatment of the duel between William Adam 
and Charles James Fox, ironically dedicated to Lord North in recog- 
nition of his powers of ''invention." It relates how Adam, banished 
from Eden to Scotland (where Wilham Adam lived) , is tempted by 
the serpent to undertake a duel with its enemy, the Fox, who is 
wounded by Adam. After ''endeavouring to flounder through this 
chaos of half -formed ideas," ^ expressed in a wretched adaptation of 
the verse of Paradise Lost, the reader will hardly be in the mood for 
Nathaniel Lancaster's Methodism Triumphant, or the Decisive Battle 
between the Old Serpent and the Modern Saint (1767) ; for, according to 
the Critical Review, Lancaster "writes in Miltonic verse, and his 
manner is so formal, that in five books he hardly excites one emotion 
of pleasantry." ^ These three pieces, together with Gascoigne's 
Steele Glas (1576), seem to be the only satires of any length writ- 
ten in blank verse before 1800 and presumably for a considerable 
time thereafter. There were, however, several long enough to be 
published by themselves, and perhaps, like John Carr's Filial Piety 
(1764), in handsome folio sheets. Carr invokes 

Her, whose Hand divine 
Pats the sleek Brain of many a mighty Bard; 
Whose Names I fain wou'd write, but fear the Worst. 
All hail, propitious Dulness! (who, but yawns 
And stretches with congenial Sympathy?).'' 

A curious kind of burlesque, curious because for fully half the 
poem the author seems not to have quite made up his mind whether 
to be quizzically in earnest or good-humoredly to poke fun, is 
William Shenstone's (Economy, a Rhapsody, addressed to Young 
Poets (1764). Funny the rhapsody rarely is; besides, seven hundred 
lines of burlesque is too much. Like the Splendid Shilling, it pictures 
the shifts and privations of impecunious poets, who are urged, in 

1 Mo.Rev.,yiw. 86. 

2 lb. Ixii. 323. Regarding the duel, see the Dictionary of National Biography, under 
"William Adam." 

3 XXV. 66-7 (1768). I know the poem only through this review. 
* Pages- 



BURLESQUE POETRY: SHENSTONE — MASTERS 321 

order that the wherewithal necessary for their lavish temperamental 
natures may be forthcoming, to devote some of the dregs of their 
time to their accounts and to 

CEconomy! thou good old-aunt! whose mien 
Furrow'd with age and care the wise adore.^ 

Shenstone must have had Philips's original in mind, for some of his 
phrases clearly burlesque Paradise Lost,^ a fact the more interesting 
because, notwithstanding his romantic tastes, his ode-writing, and 
his imitation of Spenser, Shenstone never wrote sonnets or copied 
Allegro and Penseroso. Yet he did write two more unrimed poems of 
some three or four hundred lines each. Love and Honour (a stilted tale 
of a Spanish captive and a British hero), and The Ruin'd Abby, or 
the Effects of Superstition, in which his passion for landscape garden- 
ing is strangely combined with a chronological survey of the evils 
brought upon England by Catholicism. "His blank verses," wrote 
Johnson, ''those that can read them may probably find to be like the 
blank verses of his neighbours," ^ an utterance which is equally 
applicable to nearly all unrimed humorous poems, and under which, 
as under an epitaph, they may be allowed to rest. 

Yet there is one which, though no better than many others, has 
unusual contemporary interest because of its date (1914) and be- 
cause of its appearance in that remarkable production of twentieth- 
century America, the Spoon River Anthology (19 15). The last piece 
in Mr. Masters's volume is The Spooniad, a mock-heroic which in 
three passages parodies Milton. It begins, 

^ Works (1764), i. 293. Akenside's Poet (1737) also describes the poverty of hack- 
writers. 

2 For example, "broom never comes, That comes to all" (p. 303, cf. P. L., i. 66-7); 
"seas of bliss! Seas without shore!" (p. 291, cf. P. L., xi. 749-50); "ballanc'd with 
friendship . . . The rival scale of interest kicks the beam" (p. 287, cf. P. L., iv. 997- 
1004); 

Sweet interchange 
Of river, valley, mountain, woods, and plains! 

(p. 301, cf. P. Z,., ix. 115-16); 

Of sweet refreshment, ease without annoy, 
Or luscious noon-day nap. Ah much deceiv'd. 
Much suff'ring pilgrim! thou nor noon-day nap, 
Nor sweet repose shalt find 

(p. 304, cf. P. i:.,ix. 403-7); 

His delighted eye, 
Tho' wrapt in thought, commercing with the sky 

(p. 304, cf. Penseroso, 39-40). 

' "Shenstone," in Lives (ed. Hill), iii. 358. 



322 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Of John Cabanis' wrath . . . 

.... and the fall 
Of Rhodes' bank that brought unnumbered woes 
And loss to many, with engendered hate. 

A little later come the lines, 

Say first, 
Thou son of night, called Momus, from whose eyes 
No secret hides. . . . 

andj'two pages farther on, this patent burlesque of the opening of 
the second book of Paradise Lost, 

High on a stage that overlooked the chairs . . . 
Sat Harmon Whitney, to that eminence. 
By merit raised in ribaldry and guile, 
And to the assembled rebels thus he spake.' 

* Cf. P. L., i. 1-4, 27; ii. i-io. 



CHAPTER XIV 

TRANSLATIONS OF THE CLASSICS ^ 

Blank verse was first employed, outside of the drama, in Surrey's 
translation of two books of the Aeneid (1557). The use to which the 
new measure was put was not due entirely to chance ; for to English- 
men who have loved the literature of Greece and Rome, who have 
grown up with it at school, have escaped to it from the pressure of 
affairs, and have mellowed their old age with its serenity, — to such 
men, and they have fortunately been many, the impulse to translate 
their favorite authors has been strangely potent. It has led to the 
making of hundreds of translations that have never appeared, and 
of hundreds of others the printing of which has been a costly luxury 
to their authors or publishers ; yet published a large number of them 
are, notwithstanding the few purchasers or readers they find. Even 
the feverish Hfe and scholarship of America have in recent years felt 
this impulse (which is the reverse of utilitarian) to no slight degree. 
But the significance of Surrey's work lies not so much in its being 
a translation as in its being written in blank verse; and, the more we 
think of it, the more fitting it seems that our first unrimed poem 
should be a rendering of one of the great poems of antiquity. For, 
notwithstanding the merited popularity of Dryden's Virgil and 
Pope's Homer, lovers of Greek and Latin have never been entirely 
satisfied with the heroic couplet as an English equivalent of the 
classical hexameter. Even in Pope's day there were many who 
thought with Bentley, "The verses are good verses, but the work is 
not Homer." ^ Indeed, far more serious objections could be urged 
against rime in the eighteenth century than at present; for the 
couplet had become a highly-finished, brilliant medium associated 

^ This chapter I would gladly have left unwritten, for to do it justice one ought to 
have experience in verse translation and a wide and thorough knowledge of Greek and 
Latin literature, of Dante, and of various modern writers. Even then the amount of 
time required might prove disproportionate to the results. Yet blank-verse translations 
are so numerous and important, and they are under such a heavy debt to Milton, that 
in a study of his influence they cannot be ignored. I hope that what I have written, 
unsatisfactory as it is, may give some idea of this extensive but neglected field of eight- 
eenth- and nineteenth-century poetry. The inaccuracy with which the originals are 
rendered is stressed in J. W. Draper's Theory of Translation in the Eighteenth Century 
(Neophilologus, Groningen, Holland, vi. 241-54). 

* Pope's Works (ed. J. Warton, 1797), iv. 23 n. 



324 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

in every one's mind with argument, wit, satire, and artificiality, with 
such works as Absalom and Achitophel, the Essay on Criticism, the 
Rape of the Lock, and The Dunciad. 

Yet in any age the difficulties of rimed translation are very great. 
It is hard enough to reproduce accurately, simply, and pleasantly 
the mere meaning of a poem written in a notably-condensed foreign 
language; it is far harder to render the manner and spirit of the 
original, to give approximately the same impression that it gives, — 
of robust vigor, for example, or natural ease, or exquisite art; but it 
is most difficult of all to make the work not simply faithful but fresh, 
natural, and interesting, to make it read well a hundred pages at a 
time, like an original production. To achieve these three things will 
test the mettle of the ablest writer; and, if the fetters of rime be 
added, which are much heavier in translation than in an original 
work, where the thought can be modified to fit the meter, the task 
becomes almost impossible. In the words of a well-known trans- 
lator, ''The exigencies of rhyme positively forbid faithfulness."^ 
It is like a woman's undertaking to act Hamlet, an exteedingly diffi- 
cult part at the best. In a rimed translation the thought or the 
spirit or the verse usually sufi"ers, and sometimes all three. J. S. 
Blackie makes light of the difficulties of rime, and later translators 
in general have less to say about them than did the earlier. But the 
opposition has not so much decreased as shifted its ground : modern 
poets feel more subtle objections. Rime seems to them, in the words 
of E. H. Plumptre, "to introduce an element more or less incongru- 
ous, to fetter the free flow of thought by the periodicity of the same 
sound recurring at fixed intervals, to present a temptation, very dif- 
ficult to guard against, to expansion and over-ornamentation for the 
sake of it." ^ 

Even the Augustans, practically all of whom tried their hands at 
translation, of course felt ''the troublesome and modern bondage of 
riming," but accepted it in the main as a necessary evil. Yet Dryden 
is said to have declared, "Nor would I have done my Virgil in rime if 
I was to begin it again"; ^ and, when Lyttelton expressed surprise 
that Pope had not used blank verse for his Iliad, the master of the 
heroic couplet did not defend his measure but answered that rime 
was easier for him.^ The Augustans also felt that riming was a 
modern bondage and thus misrepresented the original, just as the 

1 F. W. Newman, The Iliad, faithfully translated (1856), preface, p. vii. 

^ Tragedies of Sophocles (2d ed., 1867), p. xi. 

^ Joseph Richardson, Explanatory Notes on P. L. (1734), p. cxx. 

* Percival Stockdale, Memoirs (1809), ii. 44. 



TRANSLATIONS: OBJECTIONS TO RIME 325 

actress's sex would misrepresent the Prince of Denmark. Even so 
early as 1766 one writer anticipated Matthew Arnold's chief objec- 
tion to the couplet. ''Rhyme," he wrote, "besides obliging you to 
end the line with a good sound, serves also as a barrier between each 
in a couplet." ^ 

Opposition to rime increased through the eighteenth and nine- 
teenth centuries as greater control was gained over blank verse and 
as a more scrupulous faithfulness came to be demanded of the trans- 
lator. But the most important development since Pope's time is the 
growth in popularity of prose translations, which the Augustans 
apparently did not consider at all but which to-day are probably read 
more than any others. Yet, though the average reader may prefer 
prose, poets and men of learning as a rule do not. To them the 
Iliad, the Aeneid, and the Divine Comedy are first of all poems, and 
no other aspect of such works is it so important to convey to the 
reader as the poetic. Prose versions of these masterpieces, they ob- 
ject, are like black-and-white reproductions of a Turner or a Monet, 
in which no attempt is made to render the artist's supreme excel- 
lence, color. To the retort that no color is better than bad color, 
they reply that the color, though of course far short of the original, 
need not be bad. But it is not simply the loss of beauty that poets 
complain of; it is something more fundamental. A great poem, they 
remind us, is conceived as a poem and expressed in the language and 
figures of poetry; if it had been conceived and expressed as prose it 
would be something entirely different. Prose, they insist, misrepre- 
sents it as much as French Alexandrine verse would misrepresent 
Bacon's Essays,- for the language and style of poetry seem unnatural 
in a prose work.^ Certain it is that the production of new poetic 
translations is, if anything, on the increase in recent years and that 
the older verse translations are frequently reissued. Pope's Homer, 
Cary's and Longfellow's Dante, all have a steady sale, and cheap re- 
prints of the Earl of Derby's Iliad and Cowper's Odyssey have re- 
cently appeared. 

Almost every possible and some impossible meters have been em- 
ployed for translation of the classic epics, — the Spenserian and 

^ That is, between each pair of lines in a couplet and those that precede or follow it. 
The comment is Robert Andrews's {Works of Virgil, 1766, p. 2). Cf. Arnold, On Trans- 
lating Homer ( 1 86 1 ) , lecture i , p. 1 5 : " Rhyme inevitably tends to pair lines which in the 
original are independent, and thus the movement of the poem is changed." 

* This simile is H. D. Sedgwick's (Dante, New Haven, Conn., 1918, p. 173). 

^ It is illuminating to learn that Lewis Campbell began his version of Sophocles in 
prose, "but soon found that, for tragic dialogue in English, blank verse appeared a more 
natural and effective vehicle than any prose style which he could hope to frame" 
{Sophocles, the Seven Flays, 1883, prefatory note, p. xxvi). 



326 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

other stanzas, the octosyllabics of Marmion, a ballad meter consist- 
ing of a tetrameter and a trimeter half-line, the quatrains of Omar, 
rimed or unrimed pentameter or hexameter, hendecasyllabics, and 
fourteeners. The unrimed dactylic hexameter, which theoretically 
would appear to be the best medium for rendering the Greek and 
Latin hexameter, has been strongly urged by so sympathetic and 
discriminating a classicist and so eminent a critic as Matthew 
Arnold. Yet there are grave difficulties. It would seem obvious 
that a great translation of Homer or Virgil must be in a meter which 
has domesticated itself in Enghsh, as the hexameter had in Greek 
and Latin; otherwise, however excellent in itself, it would sound 
academic and strange and thus false to the original. Furthermore, 
good hexameters such as Arnold describes are even more difficult 
than rimes,^ and to employ them in a poem as long as the Iliad, 
without sacrificing any of its spirit or meaning, is a task to which no 
one as yet seems to have been equal. Arnold himself acknowledges 
that "a good model, on any considerable scale, of this metre, the 
English translator will nowhere find"; but he sweeps aside the diffi- 
culty in his most Olympian manner by declaring, "This is an objec- 
tion which can best be met by producing good EngHsh hexameters." ^ 
Well, sixty more years have passed and they have not yet been 
produced ! Except for Southey's far from successful Vision of Judge- 
ment, Clough's humorous Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich, and the much- 
criticized meter of Evangeline and the Courtship of Miles Standish, in 
which no one wishes to read Homer, they remain academic exercises. 

These lame hexameters the strong-wing'd music of Homer! 
No — but a most burlesque barbarous experiment, 

Tennyson exclaimed of some of them ; ^ and in a matter of this kind 
his opinion, particularly when it is reinforced by that of Swinburne 
and of Landor,^ carries no less weight than Arnold's. 

^ One reason for this is suggested by Cranch in the preface to his translation of the 
Aeneid (Boston, 1872, pp. v-vi): "To say nothing of the greater advantage the Latin 
has in its winged and airy vowel-syllables, the trouble is to find in English pure spondaic 
words enough, without which the lines must be overloaded with dactyls; the result 
being . . . fatiguing and monotonous. ... I cannot but think that the hexameter 
belongs exclusively to the costume of the antique ages, and that the less the epic muse 
has to do with it, the better." 

^ On Translating Homer, lecture iii, pp. 80, 76. 

^ /m Quantity: On Translations of Homer. "Some," he remarked on another occa- 
sion, ". . . have endeavoured to give us the Iliad in English hexameters, and by what 
appears to me their failure have gone far to prove the impossibility of the task. I have 
long held by our blank verse in this matter" (note to his Specimen of a Translation of the 
Iliad, in Works, ed. Hallam Tennyson, N. Y., 1913, p. 925). 

* "At best what ugly bastards of verse are these self-styled hexameters," wrote 
Swinburne {Essays and Studies, 1875, P- 163); and Landor, who felt, 



.'I 



TRANSLATIONS: HEXAMETER — BLANK VERSE 327 

Like Tennyson and Landor, an ever-increasing number are com- 
ing to regard blank verse as the proper medium for rendering the 
classics. It has the variety which is essential to works of length and 
which English hexameters and couplets usually lack. It is "freighted 
with all the authority of the greatest tradition in English literature; 
in it Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth wrote; " ^ and from the time 
of Paradise Lost to that of Hyperion and to our own day it has been 
indisputably the English epic meter. For these reasons it is gen- 
erally considered our equivalent for the meter of the Iliad and the 
Aeneid. 

Yet owing principally to the difficulty in writing blank verse that 
is heroic but not Miltonic, it is not the ideal verse-form for the 
classics of other tongues that some have thought it. Milton's man- 
ner is his own, something so different from Homer's or Virgil's or 
Dante's that his learned diction and the involutions of his style, 
when transferred to these poets, entirely misrepresent them. Per- 
haps it is due to his influence that blank verse lacks the rapidity, 
lightness, and suppleness necessary for an adequate rendering of 
Homer and Virgil. This is not to say that it need lack these qualities 
and may not become an ideal medium for the purpose. A great poet 
whose genius lay in this direction could probably bend the heroic 
couplet, the hexameter, or the blank verse to his will and give us a 
masterpiece of translation; but such poets are rare, and it is unlikely 
that any of them would undertake the task. 

It will be noticed that part of the Aeneid was translated into blank 
verse before any of the Iliad, and that Dryden's Virgil preceded 
Pope's Homer by eighteen years. This precedence of the Roman 
work over the Grecian continued throughout the eighteenth and, to 
a lesser degree, the nineteenth century, probably because Virgil is 
briefer than Homer and is studied more generally. After the render- 
ings of two short passages of the Aeneid by Addison (1704) and an 
anonymous translator (1726), of the whole poem by Brady (1713-26), 
and of all Virgil by Trapp (1703-31),^ the next translation of the 

We have a measure 
Fashion'd by Milton's own hand, a fuller, a deeper, a louder, 
parodied the hexameter thus: 

Afar be ambition to follow the Roman, 
Led by the German uncomb'd and jigging in dactyl and spondee, 
Lumbering shapeless jackboots which nothing can polish or supple 
{English Hexameters, in Last Fruit). ' Sedgwick, Dante, 174. 

^ See pp. 104-6 above. In the preface to the second edition of Winter (1726) Thom- 
son translated twelve lines of the Georgics into blank verse. 



328 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Latin epic was that which Alexander Strahan began to publish in 
1739 and completed in 1767. " Mr. Strahan," remarked the Monthly 
Review, — which gave the first six books the dubious praise of being 
"not inferior to the former translations of Virgil into blank verse," 
— " Mr. Strahan endeavours to imitate Milton's manner, as thinking 
it the only true method of succeeding in a translation of Virgil: he 
keeps close to his author, in respect to his sense." ^ Here are some 
typical lines: 

From hence to Acheron's Tartarean stream 

The way: a turbid gulph, with whirlpool vast, 

Boils over here, disgorging all its sand 

Into Cocytus? 

Bad as this is, it is no worse and not a great deal more Miltonic 
than may be found in other versions of the time, — that, for exam- 
ple, made in 1764 by the Oxford professor of poetry, William 
Hawkins, which the Critical Review declared to be "the worst garb 
he [Virgil] ever appeared in." ^ William Mills had even shorter 
shrift : 

Read the commandments, Mills, translate no further. 
For there 'tis written — Thou shall do no murther} 

Yet Mills's rendering of the Georgics (1780) is too dull and feeble to 
be called murder. There is more vigor and more stilted Miltonic in- 
version (Mills has none at all), but no more poetry or interest, in 
Capel Lofft's First and Second Georgic, attempted in Blank Verse 
(1784). The version of the complete Georgics which James R. Deare 
issued in 1808 seems, on the contrary, to be pleasant if not vigorous 
or inspired, and is the better for making but little use of Milton's 
style.^ 

^ ix. I (1753). The complete Aeneid is noticed in the Review for November, 1767, 
where it is called dull. I have not seen Strahan's work. 

^ lb. 2. The tenth and twelfth books of Strahan's version were contributed by Wil- 
liam Dobson, who had turned Paradise Lost into Latin and who afterwards put the first 
book into Greek. In 1757 Dobson translated the first book of Cardinal de Polignac's 
Latin Anti- Lucretius into stiff, decidedly Miltonic blank verse. 

' xvii. 425. I have not seen the work (which included the entire Aeneid, though 
only half of it was pubUshed) , but from the extracts in the review it appears to be little 
if any below the average. The reviewer objected particularly to the expressions 
" shall ^0)1 thy shrine" and "matter for hereafter joy"; but the other Miltonisms are 
inoffensive, — "gods . . . Auspicious drave the blasts," "the queen . . . her fame 
Unheeding," "thus fair Venus she bespeaks," "exploit Egregious this." 

* Crit. Rev., 1. 55; an adaptation of Abel Evans's epigram on Trapp. 

' I know these three translations of the Georgics only from the extracts and reviews 
in the magazines: for Mills, see Crit. Rev., 1. 50-55 (1780); for Lofft, Mo. Rev., Ixxii. 
345-8 (1785); for Deare, Quart. Rev., i. 69, 76-7 (1809). James Mason's translation of 
the entire Georgics into blank verse in 1810, and Robert Hoblyn's of the first book in 



TRANSLATIONS: VIRGIL 329 

Aside from Trapp's work, the only blank-verse rendering of all 
Virgil to appear in the eighteenth century was that of Robert An- 
drews, which Baskerville printed for the author in 1766. It is a 
singular affair, vigorous, abrupt, condensed, formal, often racy, but 
tending to fall into a series of separate lines, probably because it is a 
Hne-for-line translation. Such a jerky style does not permit elabo- 
rate inversions; yet the poem constantly, though only for a few 
words or phrases at a time, recalls Paradise Lost: 

Accept, O Sire! whom the Olympic king 
Thus proclaims worthy the prime meed select. 
This old Anchise's present, hence be thine, 
This embost goblet; which the Thracian Cisseus 
Erst on my sire magnificent confer 'd, 
His friendship's dear and monumental pledge. ^ 

It was almost thirty years before Virgil again appeared in blank 
verse, this time at the hands of James Beresford, whose Aeneid 
(1794) seems to be no worse than the average, though rather more 
Miltonic. It is such wearisome reading, however, that one turns 
with rehef to the eccentricities of James Henry's Eneis (1845). A 
successful physician, Henry left his practice in Dublin to walk with 
his wife and daughter back and forth across Europe, writing strange 
poems in stranger meters and examining manuscripts and editions 
of Virgil. He was one of the greatest of VirgiUan scholars, notwith- 
standing his many peculiarities, such as translating his favorite into 
a jargon like this : 

The compaginate 

Dire, of war's iron portals, shall be closed. . . . 

He says, and Maia's son demits from high. 

The lands of Carthage, and young towers to open 

Hospitious to the Teucrian; lest, of fate 

Unweeting, Dido from her bounds ofif-warn.^ 

At the opposite extreme in many respects stands the blank-verse 
translation of Virgil's works begun by Rann Kennedy and finished 

1825, I know only by title. Prior's Miltonic rendering of part of the fourth Georgic 
(written before 1721), and Richard Cumberland's of part of the third (written about 
1745), should also be mentioned. 

^ V. 533-8. Andrews went mad soon after his Virgil was published. For his hatred 
of rime, see p. 325 above. 

^ i. 358-66. As if to remove all doubts of his indebtedness to Paradise Lost, he quotes 
two lines from it on his title-page. The Eneis includes only books one and two. Henry's 
rendering of the first sLx books, curiously entitled Six Photographs of the Heroic Times 
{c. 1850?), I have not seen. Conington (English Translators of Virgil, in Quarterly 
Review, ex. 109) says it is "not metrical, but rhythmical . . . the rhythm is changed 
from time to time . . . pages of trochaic time being succeeded by others where ana- 
paests are predominant, and these again by ordinary blank verse, a measure which is 
preserved through the whole of the Fourth Book." 



330 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

in 1849 by his son Charles, who in 1861 brought out a complete ver- 
sion of his own. The Kennedy translations are readable, clearly 
Miltonic, but stiff, tame, and prosaic.^ 

The Works of Virgil, closely rendered into English Rhythm, and 
illustrated from English Poets (1855-59), by R. C. Singleton, is a curi- 
ous performance, — not a poem, we are warned, but ''a mere trans- 
lation, such as . . . should be required from the schoolboy." ^ 
One of its principal objects, indeed, was "to help in giving a more 
poetic turn to the translation of the classical poets by the school- 
boy." ^ A preference for Anglo-Saxon words, which is one of Single- 
ton's announced principles, results in bastard Spenserio-Miltonisms 
like "grunsel," "eyne," "steepy," "engrasped," "turmoiled," 
"eld," "armature," "haught," "eke," "prideful," and "hugeous." 
Such language, and a stilted, involved style, — the result in part of 
another of his principles, "adherence to the Latin order," — make 
the work sound as Miltonic as if it had been published a century 
earlier. This is how Andromache speaks of Pyrrhus : 

Who then, on following Leda-sprung Hermione, 
And Spartan nuptials, me, his handmaid e'en, 
Unto his lacquey Helenus transferred. 
To be possessed. But him, by mighty love 
Of his betrothed reft away, enfired, 
And hounded by the Furies of his crimes, 
Orestes doth surprise when off his guard 
And butchers at the altars of his sire.'* 

Similar to Singleton's work in its marked Miltonisms and its 
strange diction is the free translation of the Aeneid that W. J. Thorn- 
hill brought out in 1886. The hnguistic eccentricities (which include 
"hight," "steepy," "eld," "shagged with," "eke," "be-mad," 
"holpen," "the reboant cave reverbs") seem, like the frequent ab- 
ruptness and undue brevity of style, to be due to a desire for vigor 
and raciness, but they quite destroy the ease and charm of the Ro- 
man poet. One curious feature of this version is the occasional use 
of Alexandrines; another is the frank introduction of "expressions, 

1 The blank- verse translations of the Aeneid by John Miller (1863) and T. S. Burt 
(1883) I have not seen. 

2 Preface, p. i. 

2 lb. vi. The same purpose animated William Sewell (Singleton's successor at 
Radley school) in the blank- verse rendering of the Georgics which he brought out in 1846 
and (after entirely rewriting it) republished in 1854. To judge from the specimen 
Conington gives (Quart. Rev., ex. 107), it is too Miltonic to be easy or flowing. Sewell's 
Agamemnon (1846) and his Odes and Epodes of Horace (1850), translated like his Georgics 
"literally and rhythmically," I have not seen. 

* Aeneid, iii. 465-72. 



TRANSLATIONS: VIRGIL 33 1 

and in some few cases even whole lines, from Milton, Shakspeare, 
etc.," ^ as in this passage: 

He spake; and straight the duteus Power prepares 
His sire's behest to speed: first to his feet 
His winged shoon he ties of downy gold. . . . 
Here first, hovering on balanced wings, down dropt 
CyUene's god; thence to the flood full swoop 
Throws his steep flight. ^ 

G. K. Rickards's rendering of the first six books of the Aeneid 
(187 1) is abler, more concise, and less Miltonic than Singleton's or 
Thornhill's; yet in avoiding the "debilitating expansion of the 
sense " he lost what he himself thought " the highest merit of a poeti- 
cal translation," that it should "read like an original" and "pre- 
serve . . . the manner and spirit of the author." To whom do the 
following typical lines "read like an original" or suggest the Vir- 
gilian ease and grace? 

'Tis famed that Daedalus, from Minos' realm 

Escaping, on aerial pinions borne, 

Far to the chilly north his flight pursued. 

Till, resting on Chalcidian heights at last. 

He vowed, in homage to the DeHan God, 

Where first he touched the earth, his oar-like wings.^ 

Rickards's work was completed in 1872, when Lord Ravens- 
worth published the latter half of the Aeneid (the eleventh book 
being done by Rickards) . The first six books were again translated 
in 1893 by James Rhoades, who, holding that nothing "savours so 
much of Vergil as parts of the Blank Verse of Milton and of Cowper," 
followed all too closely the style and diction of Paradise Lost: 

Daedalus, flying from Minos' realm, 'tis said, 

Dared on swift wings to trust him to the sky, 

Upon his uncouth journey floated forth 

Toward the chill Bears, and stood light-poised at last 

On the Chalcidian hUl. Here first to earth 

Restored, he dedicated to thy name, 

Phoebus, the oarage of his wings.^ 

Two years later Sir Theodore Martin printed for private circulation 
his translation of the sixth book in a blank verse intended to be 

^ Preface, p. xvii. Thornhill gives some examples on page xviii; others may be 
found on pages 195 (line 2), 237 (line 8), etc. 

* Page 129 (book iv). "Downy gold" and "throws his steep flight" are from Para- 
dise Lost, V. 282 (of wings in each case) and iii. 741. 

' vi. 15-20. The passages quoted in the text above are from the preface. 

* vi. 16-22. Rhoades's Georgics translated into English Verse (1881) I have not seen. 



332 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Shakespearean rather than Miltonic. The work has distinction, but 
falls far short of its author's wish that it should "read as an Enghsh 
poem." ^ Equally distinguished and equally un-Miltonic is the line- 
for-line version of the whole Aeneid which Charles J. Billson brought 
out in two volumes in 1906. It is a dignified, admirable piece of 
work that moves easily within its narrow bounds, but it impresses 
me as prose, not verse. 

Apparently the first unrimed version of the Aeneid to be made 
in the United States was the one issued by C. P. Cranch in 1872. 
Though uninspired, it is easy, pleasant reading, and though Miltonic 
it is fairly natural, often conversational, with the result that it was 
reprinted in 1886 and 1897. Lines so good as 

Flashing with tremulous splendor on the sea * 

are rare; but, as an hour spent with the book fortunately leaves a 
better impression than ten minutes do, no extract so short as these 
words of Andromache's can do it justice: 

While we, — our country burned, o'er many seas 
Conveyed, having in servitude brought forth 
Our children, — we were forced to bear the pride 
And contumely of the Achillean race, 
And of a haughty youth, who seeking then 
Hermione in Spartan nuptial bonds. 
Transferred me, slave to him, to be possessed 
By Helenus, who also was his slave.^ 

Seven years after the pubhcation of these lines, J. D. Long, then 
Heutenant-governor of Massachusetts and later governor. Congress- 
man, and secretary of the United States navy, brought out his 
Aeneid, "the snatch and pastime of the last year," a work so pro- 
saic and off-hand, so deficient in Virgilian finish and grace, that, 
notwithstanding its vigor, it is interesting principally as one of the 
all-too-rare products of American statesmen in the field of letters. 

The line, 

No sooner said, than Mercury sets out,^ 

represents one extreme of Long's style. The other extreme — short 
passages stately and Miltonic in character — may be seen here : 

Now sweeping full and free along these banks . . . 
Parting the teeming fields, where my proud home, 
Mistress of haughty states, shall one day rise.* 

* See his "L'envoi," pp. xi-xii. ^ vii. 11. ' ill. 417-24. 

* iv. 316. Compare Atlas's head "frowsy with pines" (iv. 329), "instructing him 
Anent the inhabitants" (vi. 1165-6), "day done meantime, the," etc. (viii. 343). 

' viii. 76-9. 



TRANSLATIONS: VIRGIL 333 

The war gave a pause to translating, as to other occupations of 
leisure; yet a blank- verse rendering of Virgil, the latest that has 
come to my attention, was completed in America by Theodore C. 
Williams during the second year of the conflict.^ Though not one of 
our few great translations, and perhaps not the best Virgil in Eng- 
lish (if such a thing exists), it is the one that I should prefer to read. 
It aims to be popular and "at the same time . . . really exact and 
scholarly." ^ Some of the principles announced in the admirable in- 
troduction, — the desire to bring out the "dramatic and argumenta- 
tive force" of the speeches and the "religious suggestiveness " of the 
language,^ — though novel, appear to be carefully thought out and 
sound. But what especially commends the translation is that as a 
rule it is finely poetic in a Virgilian way, and that it is readable : we 
are enticed on from page to page as in very few other versions. Yet 
it is surprisingly Miltonic, too much so indeed, for it abounds in 
such expressions as "This admonition given Latinus hid not." ^ As 
Williams's work, like its original, is not a poem of striking passages, 
any brief extract will be unsatisfactory : 

Now Sleep has portals twain, whereof the one 

Is horn, they say, and easy exit gives 

To visions true; the other, gleaming white 

With polished ivory, the dead employ 

To people night with unsubstantial dreams.^ 

The most successful blank-verse translation of Virgil, or perhaps 
of any classic poet, does not, however, come from America, but 
properly enough from the British aristocracy. It is Lord Burgh- 
clere's Georgics (1904). This highly poetic but not ornate version is 
equally happy in the noble prayer with which the first book ends; in 
such "signs of cloudless calms and sunny skies" as these (lines 
which are dreary prose in most renderings), 

The rooks in bated tones 
Thrice and again repeat a softened note. 
And you shall hear them in their roost above 
Chattering to one another in the leaves, 
Thrilled with I know not what mysterious charm;' 

in the pathetic final separation of Orpheus and Eurydice; ^ and in 
pictures like this, 

^ The Aeneid appeared in 1908, the Georgics and Eclogues in 1915. 

* Aeneid, introd., p. xxvi. ^ vi. 894-8. 

^ lb. xxviii. 6 Pages 41, 42. 

* vii. 105-6. ^ Page 189. 



334 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

And arbute flings him largess in the woods. 
Or golden autumn lays its varied store 
Down at his feet, whilst on the cliffs above 
The vintage basks and mellows in the sun. 
Ay, and sweet little ones shall climb and cling 
Close to his lips; and spotless virtue guard 
The innocence of home.^ 

Burghclere was wise enough not to imitate Milton. 

The translations of Lord Burghclere and T. C. Williams are for 
the present our latest unrimed versions of the Latin poet ; but others 
are doubtless preparing, for there are no indications that interest in 
either Virgil or blank verse is falling off. Renderings of Homer, on 
the other hand, are neither so recent nor so numerous; in fact, there 
have been only three in blank verse that are complete. Unrimed 
Homeric translation also began much later, for Virgil had been ren- 
dered in part by Surrey, Addison, Trapp, and Brady before 17 17, 
when Fenton Englished the eleventh Odyssey. But what is more sur- 
prising is that, with four exceptions (apart from a few translations 
of short passages) , the unrimed versions of Homer were all published 
in the thirteen years from 1859 to 1871.^ Perhaps the dearth before 
1859 may be due to the extraordinary vogue of Pope's version and 
the popularity of Pope and Cowper as poets, for other writers would 
naturally have shrunk from the inevitable comparison with these 
masters. The passing of their popularity towards the middle of the 
century would also help to account for the number of unrimed 
translations of Homer made at that time, just as to the admirable 
prose versions of Butcher and Lang (1879) and Lang, Leaf, and 
Myers (1883), and to the success, in America at least, of Bryant's 
rendering in blank verse (1870-71) and Palmer's in rhythmical prose 
(1891), may be attributed the decHne of blank-verse translations in 
recent years. Some versions in rime and some in dactylic hexameter 
have appeared, to be sure; but, except for those of Maginn, Sotheby, 
Alford, Newman, Morris, Way, Mackail, Cummings, and Cotterill, 
most of them have been limited to a book or two, and even these 
would hardly bring the number up to what might be expected. 

Between the experiments of Fenton and Broome ^ and the comple- 
tion of Cowper's monumental task there seem to be only five frag- 

1 Page 95. 

2 It was in 1861, just before most of these translations appeared, that Matthew 
Arnold published the three lectures "On Translating Homer" which he had delivered 
the year before. 

' See pp. 106-7 above. 



TRANSLATIONS: HOMER 335 

ments of Homer in blank verse. The first of these is a creditable 
rendering of the parting of Hector and Andromache, made about 
1750 by William Hamilton of Bangour.^ Though clearly Miltonic, 
it is more natural and pleasing than the work of Fenton or Broome, 
or than the Essay towards a Translation of Homer's Works, in Blank 
Verse, which J. N. Scott brought out in 1755. Pope's errors, which 
Scott dwelt upon, formed the excuse for this version; yet, as the 
critics pointed out, Scott himself exhibits most of the faults of the 
Augustan but produces scarcely any lines that are "excellent or 
poetical in themselves," except "those he has taken verbatim from 
Milton, without the slightest acknowledgment." ^ The thirteen 
passages he rendered into English were intended as specimens of a 
complete Homer, which the reviewers' castigations seem to have dis- 
suaded him from finishing. A more virulent assailant of Pope, the 
Rev. Samuel Langley, met with the same fate when, in 1767, he is- 
sued his blank- verse translation of the first book of the Iliad as "a 
Specimen of the Whole, which is to follow." The whole had, indeed, 
"lain long finished by him," probably distorted after the fashion of 
the "Specimen": 

Shouted the Greeks applause, and all agreed 
The priest was to be rev'renc'd, and his gifts 
Receiv'd so splendid. 

Curiously enough, the prose of the conceited author's preface is as 
pompous and involved as his verse.^ 

Cowper's version, which came out in 1791, appears to have neither 
discouraged nor stimulated Homeric translation. His picture of the 
shield of Hercules seemed "flat and prosaic" to a certain Thomas 
Vivian, who thought Pope's rendering of the same passage "a bur- 
lesque." Inasmuch as Vivian criticized Cowper for not keeping "a 
steady eye on Milton," it is no wonder that his own version of the 
Hues, though condensed, is pompous, ornate, and involved, that he 
writes "frequent was the sound Of Hymenaeal song," and "rapid 

^ Poems on Several Occasions (1760), 190-94. For Hamilton's Miltonic translation 
oi part oiPhiloctetes, and his other blank verse, see Bibl. I, 1748, c. 1750 w., 1760; for 
his imitations of Allegro and Penseroso, see below, pp. 451-3. 

^ See the Monthly Review, xii. 369, where two of these thefts from Paradise Lost are 
given. I have seen only criticisms of the work, — in this review (pp. 355-70) and in the 
Scots Magazine, xvii. 165-6. 

* I have seen only extracts from the work {Crit. Rev., xxiii. 36-41). Another frag- 
mentary version is listed below, Bibl. I, T786. I have not seen the translation of part 
of the Iliad made by Edward Capell sometime before 1781 (see Lofft's Laura, no. 861, 
n.), or another sample of the Iliad (running to only three hundred lines) which ap- 
peared anonymously in 1807 as Specimen of an English Homer, in Blank Verse. 



336 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

mid it's numerous reeds a stream Sonorous flow'd." ^ Gilbert 
Thompson's Select Translations from Homer and Horace (1801), 
though, in the words of the reviewer, "accurate and plain," makes 
considerable use of Miltonic inversions and has lines as creditable as 

For neither the great Acheloian king, 

Omnipotence itself, can equalise; 

Nor the vast strength of the resounding main.^ 

But far more poetic and pleasing than any of these versions, and 
more natural than Cowper's, are the forty-seven pages that C. A. 
Elton published in 18 14. As usual, the best passages, like this one, 
are the least Miltonic : 

Upon the hearth glow'd bright 
A fire wide-blazing; and the curl'd perfume 
Of the cleft cedar and the cypress-tree, 
Red in the flame, far off the island fill'd 
With fragrant smoke. She, trilling her sweet voice, 
Within the grotto sate, and cross'd the web 
With golden shuttle. ^ 

Even short passages of Homer in blank verse must have been rare 
in the first half of the nineteenth century, for no others made in Eng- 
land have come to my attention. Far away in Virginia, however, a 
busy lawyer and statesman, William Munford (i 775-1825) was oc- 
cupying his spare time in turning the Iliad into blank verse. His 
work, which was not published till 1846, has attracted little atten- 
tion, probably because, although less Miltonic (but scarcely less 
pleasing, it would seem), it differs too little from Cowper's version to 
justify its existence.^ For, although Augustine Birrell says that 
Cowper's rendering "has many merits, and remains unread," ^ and 

1 "Some Observations on Hesiod and Homer, and the Shields of Hercules and 
Achilles," with translations, in Essays by a Society of Gentlemen at Exeter (1796), 443, 
436, 444, 467, 471- 

^ Crit. Rev., new arr., xxxvi. 108. I have seen only this review of the work. The 
extract from Charles Dunster's Specimen of an English Homer in Blank Verse (1807), 
which Egerton Brydges prints in his Censiira Literaria (2d ed., 1815, ii. 401-3), is literal, 
crabbed, and un-Miltonic. James Morrice's translation of the entire Iliad into blank 
verse (1809) I know only by title. 

^ Specimens of the Classic Poets, i. 38 (from the Odyssey). 

* I know Munford's work only from the article upon it in the North American Re- 
view, Lxiii. 149-65. These lines, quoted there, seem to be typical: 

Them their chiefs 
With ease distinguish 'd, and in order plac'd. 
As skilful herdsmen readily select 
From hundreds mingled in their pastures wide, 
Each his own flock of goats. 

* Res Judicatae (1892), 102. 



TRANSLATIONS: HOMER 337 

A. H. Clough queried, "Where is the man who has ever read it?," ^ 
the North American Review, in discussing Munford's work, remarked 
that "the two most popular" translations of Homer were Pope's 
and Cowper's;^ and much similar testimony might be adduced.^ 
Indeed, for half a century the only blank-verse translation, and 
except for Pope's the only version of any kind that was at all satis- 
factory, was that by the poet of Olney. Even to-day, when if not 
forgotten it is talked about rather than read, his Odyssey has been 
reprinted in a cheap, popular form. Much can be said in defence of 
his work, and not a little has been said by so eminent a Homeric 
scholar and translator as J. S. Blackie, who, agreeing with "Pro- 
fessor" Wilson that it is "only dunces who think Cowper dull," in- 
sists that "his excellences are such as require a cultivated taste to 
appreciate them." What Blackie particularly objects to is the 
poet's "tameness and a want of perception of the minstrel character 
of Homer . . . the more quiet and rural domain of the Odyssey" 
being better suited to his talents.^ Bookish, formal, involved, pom- 
pous, and excessively Miltonic the translation certainly is; ^ but its 
greatest defect is a lack of the spontaneous, easy charm that has 
endeared Cowper 's original verse to thousands of readers. 

Thus far the unrimed renderings of Homer have been few, but be- 
tween 1859 and 1870 they come thick and fast. The first English- 
man after Cowper to turn any large part of the Greek epics into blank 
verse seems to have been I. C. Wright, who brought out his rendering 
of the Iliad between 1859 and 1864. It is an admirable work, noble, 
flowing, rapid, and in the main direct and fairly natural. Some of 
the most beautiful passages in the original, with which most trans- 
lators fail, Wright rendered effectively and simply. Yet objection 
might be made to expressions Hke "whilom," "hight," "what 
time," to the use of adjectives for adverbs, and to the frequent in- 
versions which make most of the poem unmistakably Miltonic. 
These hnes, neither the simplest and best, nor, on the other hand, 
the closest to Paradise Lost, are perhaps typical : 

^ Quoted in the preface to the Globe edition of Cowper, p. Ixvii. 

^ bdii. 156. 

^ "I delight in Cowper's Homer; I have read it again and again," said Samuel 

Rogers (Table-Talk, 2d ed. 1856, p. 29); and Rogers's editor adds in a footnote, 

Thomas Campbell once told me how greatly he admired Cowper's Homer: he said 

that he used to read it to his wife, who was moved even to tears by some passages 

of it." 

* "On Poetical Translation, and the English Translations of Homer," in his Homer 
and the Uiad (Edin., 1866), i. 437, 440. 
' See pp. 170-72 above. 



338 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

This said, illustrious Hector stretch'd his arms 
To clasp the child; but with a cry of fear 
Back drew the infant to the nurse's breast, 
Scared at the brazen mail and horse-hair plume 
That waved terrific o'er the crested helm. 
Out laughed the father, and the noble mother. 
Instant the hero from his brow removed 
The glittering helm, and placed it on the ground.^ 

Before Wright's Iliad was completed a similar version appeared, 
in 1864, which was destined to be more popular than his and to be 
reprinted in cheap form half a century later. The rank and political 
prominence of the translator, the Earl of Derby, may have had some- 
thing to do with his success, which is somewhat remarkable since 
his work is less rapid and flowing, and above all less poetic, than 
Wright's. It contains wretched lines like 

Pollux, unmatch'd in pugilistic skill, 
and, as in Hector's words to his wife, 

Haply in Argos, at a mistress' beck, 
Condemn'd to ply the loom, or water draw 
From Hypereia's or Messeis' fount, 
Heart-wrung, by stern necessity constrain'd,'' 

has the "elaborate and self-retarding . . . Miltonic movement of 
Cowper," ^ whom the earl often follows closely and from whom he 
adapts many lines. 

When, in 1863, the Rev. T. S. Norgate brought out his translation 
of the Odyssey, Cowper was the only writer who had printed more 
than a single book of the poem without rime. Norgate published his 
version of the Homeric Batrachomyomachia the same year and of the 
Iliad in 1864, thus becoming one of the three poets who have trans- 
lated all of Homer into English blank verse. Yet so little attention 
did his work attract that I have been able to learn only that it "ap- 
pears to have the merit of general accuracy . . . the language is 
simple and vigorous, but the verse lacks music and rhythm."^ 
George Musgrave was ignorant of its existence when in 1865 he pub- 
lished his own Odyssey in blank verse. In this translation the ocean 
is "the beauteous lake saline," Minerva the "goddess of light- 
gleaming eye," one of "the immortal deities eterne"; indeed, so 
pompous is the language, so inverted and involved the style, that the 
poem reads like a burlesque of Paradise Lost. Here is a sample : 

1 vi. 503-10. ' Arnold, On Translating Homer, lecture i. 

' iii. 277, vi. 531-4. ^ Westminster Rev., new series, xxvi. 554 (1864). 






TRANSLATIONS: HOMER 339 

Nor did Calypso, of the goddess race 

True goddess prov'd, when now approaching near 

His form she hail'd, her visitant ignore.^ 

This in the year of grace 1865 ! 

Three unrimed translations of the Odyssey appeared in 1869. 
That by Lovelace Bigg- Wither, in "accentuated dramatic verse," I 
have been unable to find anything further about.^ G. W. Edgin- 
ton's was condemned by the Westminster Review as "bald, spiritless, 
and monotonous," since the blank verse, which "is almost never 
varied,. . . becomes very wearisome " and the style is " pedestrian, 
and even slipshod." ^ E. E. Witt's rendering of the fifth and ninth 
books is pleasing and poetic, similar to Wright's Iliad but more at- 
tractive. Edginton's work seems to be but sKghtly Miltonic, and 
Witt's, as may be seen from these lines, is far less so than Cowper's: 

Him fairy-footed goddess Ino saw, 
Leucothoe, child of Cadmus, who of old 
A mortal was of voice articulate. 
But now within the chambers of the deep 
A mermaid dwelt with rank of deity.^ 

The next year saw two American translations of Homer. Such 
lines as, 

I fear it will be hard to find a man 
To go on such an errand, all alone, 

reveal the conversational and prosaic character of W. G. Cald- 
cleugh's Iliad, while a passage on the same page shows that each 
line tends to stand apart from the others and that Miltonic inver- 
sions are introduced in order to make prose appear verse, — 

If to the guards 
He wlU consent to go, and orders give; 
His son and Merion their captains are, — 
Charge of the watch to them intrusted is.^ 

The other rendering of Homer that appeared in 1870 was the Iliad 
of William Cullen Bryant, who supplemented it the following year 
by the publication of the Odyssey. Although these widely-read 

1 V. 120-122. Strangely enough, Musgrave's work reached a second edition in 1869. 
Meantime E. L. Swifte had in 1868 translated the first book of the Iliad and extracts 
from other books into "Early-English blank verse." I have not seen his work. 

2 R. F. Bigg-Wither, Materials for a History of the Wither Family (Winchester, 1907), 
64. The author says that his father also translated the Iliad "into verse" but did not 
publish it. 

' New series, xxxvi. 644 (1869). The brief quotation given in the Review bears out 
the criticism. 

* Page 29. ^ Page 174. 



340 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

translations have undoubtedly owed part of their vogue to the popu- 
larity of Bryant's original poems, they deserve the reputation they 
have enjoyed. Made on principles almost as different from Cowper's 
as from Pope's, they are as unlike either of these versions as they can 
well be. For Bryant "endeavored to be strictly faithful," to pre- 
serve "the natural order of the words" and the Homeric "simplicity 
of style," to "attain what belongs to the original, — a fluent narra- 
tive style, which shall carry the reader forward without the impedi- 
ment of unexpected inversions and capricious phrases." ^ And he 
achieved these objects : his rendering is easy, rapid, and direct. Yet 
one reason why it is so natural and readable is that it does not strive 
for the sonorous splendor and the stateliness of verse which consti- 
tute much of the beauty and greatness of Homer. Bryant's version 
is not "pre-eminently noble," it is not "in the grand style." Most 
earlier translators had intended that theirs should be; it was their 
desire to reproduce these qualities that led them to employ the lan- 
guage and manner of Paradise Lost, of which Bryant makes no use. 
They went too far in one direction and he in another, with the 
result that a satisfactory blank-verse rendering of Homer is still to 
seek.^ 

For the subsequent translations are of Httle account, — appear to 
be, I should say, for there are probably a number, like that issued by 
J. B. Rose in 1874, which I have not seen. Mordaunt Barnard's 
Odyssey (1876) had as its object "to assist backward students in 
mastering the original, and to give ... a simple and unambitious 
version, often differing little from mere prose." This humble pur- 
pose it achieves; it is also rapid, readable, and much nearer being 
poetic and inspired than is the version of the first twelve books of the 
same poem which General G. A. Schomberg brought out in 1879. 
Schomberg has a large proportion of end-stopped lines, and, like 
Barnard, follows Bryant in not attempting the grand style. These 
men found it easy not to be Miltonic; but the Earl of Carnarvon 
accomplished a far more difficult task in giving his version of the 
first half of the Odyssey (1886) considerable distinction and nobility 
without employing the style of Paradise Lost? Meanwhile, in his 
Similes of Homer's Iliad (1877), W. C. Green had published transla- 

1 Preface to his Iliad. 

^ Temperamentally Bryant was not adapted to the translation of Homer: he was 
punctilious, ascetic, and rather cold; he lacked spontaneity, he was too much of an 
"indoor man." 

^ Carnarvon had rendered books v and xi separately in 1880. In 1879 he had also 
translated the Agamemnon of Aeschylus into blank verse. I do not see that this work is 
at all Miltonic. 



TRANSLATIONS: FfiNELON — OVID 341 

tions that are Miltonic in the best sense, rich, dignified, and lofty but 
not pompous. Yet, when he went on to the narrative passages, 
though his Miltonisms remained his inspiration deserted him, with 
the result that his careful translation of the first half of the Iliad, 
which appeared along with the original text in 1884, is pedestrian 
and somewhat awkward. William Cud worth's blank- verse render- 
ings of eight books of the Odyssey and three of the Iliad (1891-5) I 
have not seen. The complete Iliad, published in 191 1 by A. G. 
Lewis, an American, confessedly owes something to Bryant's ver- 
sion, but is less poetic and less effective; indeed, it is the extreme 
of non-Miltonic, conversational translation. 

Odysseus's son, Telemachus, received from eighteenth-century 
translators more attention, considering his importance, than the 
much-enduring hero himself. Fenelon's Telemaque (1699) has, in 
whole or in part, been rendered into English over thirty times, and 
some of these translations have seen six or even twelve editions. 
Most of them are, like the original, in prose; but, as the work is a 
kind of epic, at least six are not unnaturally in blank verse. I 
have seen none of them; but, to judge from extracts of the one 
issued by John Youde between 1775 and 1793, they can hardly have 
raised the standard of English poetic translations. This is what 
Youde called blank verse: 

Almost all men to marriage are inclin'd; 
There 's nothing hinders it but poverty. 
If you oppress them not with taxes, they 
Their wives and children wUl with ease maintain; 
For stUl the earth, the ever-grateful earth. 
On those who cultivate her with due care. 
Largely bestows her fruits.^ 

''To represent the 'Ovidian graces,'" remarked the Monthly 
Review with some little truth, "... the couplet, the language, 
and the manner of Dryden and Pope appear to us peculiarly 
adapted." ^ J. J. Howard was not of this opinion, however, for in 
1807 he pubHshed the two volumes of his Metamorphoses in a dull, 
stiff, unpoetic adaptation of the verse and style of Paradise Lost: 

^ Mo. Rev., enl. ed., xi. 105 (1793). For the other eighteenth-century blank-verse 
renderings that I have noticed, see Bibl. I, 1729 n. (anon.), 1742 n. (Hinchliffe) , 
1773 n. (Clarke), 1787 (Whitehouse) , 1788 n. (Canton). Clarke's version was received 
with curt disapproval by the reviewer. John Lockman's translation of Voltaire's 
Henriade (which I have not seen) is of interest because of its early date, 1732. 

' Enlarged ed., liv. 426. 



342 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Their neighbouring scite, 
Acquaintance first encourag'd, — primal step 
To further intimacy: love, in time, 
Grew from this chance connection; and they long'd 
To join by lawful rites; but harsh forbade 
Their rigid sires the union fate had doom'd.^ 

Howard's failure cannot be laid to the meter; for Ovid's stories, if 
not all his "graces," were interestingly rendered into blank verse in 
1871 by Henry King, whose version, though Miltonic, is rapid, 
pleasing, and thoroughly readable, as may perhaps be seen in this 
picture of Perseus : 

When now the Youth, to either ankle bound 

His feathery wings resumed, and on his thigh 

The moony falchion girt, and cleaving light 

With oary foot the liquid air, afar 

O'er many a realm and many a people flew, 

Till down upon the Ethiopian shores. 

Of Cepheus ruled, he looked; — where Ammon's wrath 

Unjust had doomed Andromeda.^ 

Lucretius, greatest of didactic poets, might have exerted con- 
siderable influence in so didactic a century as the eighteenth if he 
had been a popular writer; but, as his arguments are not easy read- 
ing and his ideas and point of view were not attractive to most Eng- 
lishmen of the period, his impress on literature was slight. Creech's 
rimed translation of the De Rerum Nalura, which went through six 
editions in forty years (1682-1722), seems to have held the field 
alone till an anonymous prose version appeared in 1743, a rimed one 
of the first book in 1799, and a rendering of the whole poem in blank 
verse by J. M. Good in 1805. This last is a dignified work in the 
Thomsonian style and diction marked by nearly all the Miltonic de- 
vices, which render it sonorously effective in the more poetic pas- 
sages, though stiff and inflated in those devoted to argument. 
Among the more successful lines are these: 

Far, far from mortals, and their vain concerns, 
In peace perpetual dwell th' immortal Gods: 
Each self-dependent, and from human wants 
Estrang'd for ever. There, nor pain pervades, 
Nor danger threatens; every passion sleeps; 
Vice no revenge, no rapture virtue prompts.' 

^ Quoted, Mo. Rev., enl. ed., liv. 427. I have not seen the work itself. 

^ iv. 786-93. George Turberville translated sLx "Heroycall Epistles " of Ovid into 
blank verse (1567), and Nicholas Breton is said to have done something " of the same 
kind" (J. P. Collier, Poetical Decameron, 1820, i. 117-18). 

' i. 57-62. Unusual interest in Lucretius was manifested during the two decades 
following 1795. In 1796 R. P. Knight produced his rimed Progress of Civil Society, the 



TRANSLATIONS: LUCRETIUS — DUFRESNOY 343 

In view of the comparative excellence of Good's translation, it is 
hard to see why C. F. Johnson, an American, should have brought 
out another blank- verse Lucretius in 1872, particularly since his 
version is less easy and poetic than the earlier one and nearly as 
Miltonic. 

De Arte Graphica, or the Art of Painting, translated from the Latin 
of C. A. Dufresnoy, is the title of a work published in 1754 by James 
Wills. Dufresnoy 's poem must have had many admirers in England ; 
for it was also translated by Dryden and by William Mason, and 
even Wills's bald, line-for-hne version, which though unrimed is but 
shghtly Miltonic, was reprinted in 1765. Another blank- verse ren- 
dering of a Franco-Latin work (The Temple of Gnidus, 1763) has a 
more curious history, for it was derived from Montesquieu's French 
prose through a Latin translation made by an Englishman. Here is 
a specimen: 

He stays his tardy lapse! The sequent streams 
Find waves that move not, while the am'rous God 
Pleas'd in his placid channel rests supine.^ 

The year in which Wills's work first appeared Isaac Hawkins 
Browne published his Latin prose essay De Animi Immortalitate, 
which was immediately turned into dull Miltonic verse by Richard 
Grey. Two other English versions, besides one of the first book, 
were printed the same year, two more in 1765 and 1766,^ and a sixth 
(with the Latin text, an elaborate commentary, and notes) in 1795. 
This last, the work of John Lettice, though Hke Grey's in blank verse, 
is more stilted, not so close to the original or so clear. It distorts the 
style of Paradise Lost in this fashion : 

Doubt'st thou still this? Then say, what reas'ning proves 
A God supreme, in equity, who rules, 
Or wisdom infinite? ^ 

"general design" of which was "taken from the latter part of the fifth book" of De 
Rerum Natura. Besides that published in 1799, another rimed version of book one was 
brought out in 1808 by W. H. Drummond; in 1813 Thomas Busby issued his rendering 
of the entire poem into rime. Good's work had the honor of being praised by Nathan 
Drake before it appeared {Literary Hours, 1798, no. i), and of being reprinted several 
times, along with a new prose version, in the Bohn library (1848, etc.). 

1 Crit. Rev., xv. 389. I have not seen the poem itself, which is anonymous. The 
Latin version was by Michael Clancy. 

* Soame Jenyns, WiUiam Hay, and John Byrom pubUshed rimed versions in 1754 
(Byrom of book i only). I do not know what meter John Cranwell used in the transla- 
tion he issued at Cambridge in 1765; Joseph Highmore's prose rendering appeared in 
1766. 

* ii. 498-500. Lettice points out (p. 193) that lines 19-21 of his first book are "imi- 
tated from" Lycidas, 67-8, and the same borrowing in Byrom's version is noted by his 
editor. On pages 309-10 Lettice translates a passage from Claudian into equally Mil- 
tonic blank verse. 



344 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Such unrimed translations from other Greek and Latin poets as 
have come to my attention are unimportant, — the forgotten, and as 
a rule fragmentary, efforts of minor writers. Prior's rendering of 
the two h)mins of Callimachus, already noticed, is an exception.^ 
Horace, one of the last poets most persons would think of putting 
into blank verse, was among the first to be so rendered. As early as 
1698 four of the epistles were translated into the Miltonic measure 
by that discerning champion of Paradise Lost, Samuel Say; and in 
the mid-eighteenth century Roger Comberbach defended blank 
verse against the attacks of John Byrom by translating one of the 
odes into it.^ Gilbert Thompson's attempts, "Select Translations 
from Homer and Horace" (1801), are unrimed,^ and so is the "imi- 
tation" of "Integer vitae" made some time before 1846 by W. S. 
Walker.^ Ditis Chorus, or Hell Broke Loose (1781), is the winsome 
title of an anonymous version of Petronius Arbiter's Satyricon, 
which was "faithfully adapted to the times" in this fashion: 

I curse the height to which myself have rais'd 
Britannia's name, and my own gifts repent. 

The disgusted author even rejoices in "Bunker's fatal hill" and 
"Lexington heap'd high with double slaughter." ^ Bits of Lucan's 
Pharsalia were put into Miltonic dress in the first quarter of the 
nineteenth century,^ but not until 1896 was the whole poem rendered 
into blank verse. This translation, the work of Edward Ridley (who 
reprinted it in 1905), has some ot the color and youthful vigor as well 
as some of the faults of its original, facts that may explain how a 
work published almost in our own day comes to be so strangely 
formal, stilted, and abrupt. These characteristic lines, for example, 
might well occur in an eighteenth-century imitation of Paradise 
Lost: 

Darkness unbroken, save by chanted spells, 

Reigns ever. Not where gape the misty jaws 

Of caverned Taenarus, the gloomy bound 

Of either world, through which the nether kings 

^ See p. 105 above. A Miltonic version of the "Hymn on the Bath of Minerva" 
appeared in C. A. Elton's Specimens of the Classic Poets (1814), i. 283-91. 
^ See pp. 90, 30 n. 2, above. 

* See p. 336 above. 

* Poetical Remains (ed. J. Moultrie, 1852), 157-8. Walker also translated into 
decidedly Miltonic blank verse three short pages of fragments from Ennius and a page 
from the Persae of Aeschylus {ib. 167-72). See also p. 351 below. 

' Crit. Rev., liii. 67-8. I have not seen the poem. 

« See Bibl. 1, 1808 (Noble), 1814 (Elton), 1821 ("A. S."). One of the earliest pieces 
of blank verse was Marlowe's line-for-line translation of Lucan's first book (1600). 



MINOR TRANSLATIONS 345 

Permit the passage of the dead to earth, 
So poisonous, mephitic, hangs the air.i 

Hesiod seems to have been first put into blank verse in 1796, when 
Thomas Vivian rendered the descriptive part of the Shield of Her- 
cules and a passage from the Works and Days? In 181 2 Elton ran 
the entire Shield of Hercules into a decidedly Miltonic mould,^ and 
at the same time translated the Theogony in this fashion: 

First Chaos was: next ample-bosom'd Earth, 
The seat eternal and immoveable 
Of deathless Gods, who still th' Olympian heights 
Snow-topt inhabit."* 

These lines, as well as the whole poem, are far closer to the style of 
Paradise Lost than are the renderings from Homer or from such of 
the fifty-nine other Greeks and Romans as Elton turned into blank 
verse for his Specimens of the Classic Poets. ^ Though he was a stout 
defender of Milton's measure, he used rime in most of his transla- 
tions. Similar to the Specimens in that it contains a number of short 
passages from various Greek poets rendered in the style and verse of 
Paradise Lost, is Jacob Bryant's New System, or an Analysis of An- 
tient Mythology (1774-6). According to the Critical Review, E. B. 
Greene's unrimed Hero and Leander,from Musaeus (1773), "is exe- 
cuted in a style of mediocrity," ^ which probably means it is tame. 
That is hardly the fault to be found with these typical hnes from the 
pompous Miltonic version of the Cassandra of Lycophron which 
Philip Yorke, Viscount Royston, published in 1806: 

Which erst the King 
Of Waters, Amoebean architect, 
Piled to the clouds, but in the piny womb 
Of some great ammiral the massy bulk 
Flew lightly o'er the waves .^ 

Lady Sophia Burrell's Thymhriad, from Xenophon's Cyropcedia 
(1794), is by no means a translation but a greatly enlarged, senti- 
mentahzed version of the story of Panthea and of Cyrus's war 

* vi. 764-9. 

■■' "Observations on Hesiod," etc., in Essays by a Society of Gentlemen at Exeter (1796) , 

455-65, 432-3 n- 

' Hesiod' s Remains (181 2), 199-233. 

* Lines 166-9 (*^- 75)- Ii^ later editions of the Theogony Elton's phraseology is 
considerably changed. 

' See above, p. 336. 

' xxxvii. 315 (1774). Thomas Gibbons appended to his Christian Minister (1772) 
short translations from Cleanthes, Pythagoras, Casimir, and Watts. 
^ Lines 708-12; cf. P.L.,i. 292-4. 



346 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

against Croesus. A few lines will give some idea of the Mil tonic 
style and the couplet prosody which mark the hundred and fifty- 
four pages of Lady Burrell's diffuse work : 

From his pavilion, negligent of rest, 

The prince unto Araspes' tent repair'd. . . . 

With looks feroce, and tongue that spake severe. ^ 

Few distinctions built upon what is apparently so slight a founda- 
tion were so carefully preserved in the eighteenth century as that be- 
tween dramatic and non-dramatic blank verse. Yet, although the 
style and diction of Paradise Lost were rarely if ever employed in the 
many English verse-plays of the time, they were generally used in 
translations of Greek drama, which might, not unnaturally, have 
followed the lofty passages in Shakespeare. Milton, however, was 
more classic, he stood pre-eminently for noble dignity; and, too, the 
writings of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were thought of as 
poems almost more than as plays. Furthermore, in most aspects 
Milton's genius was closer to the Greek drama than to Homer; if, 
therefore, his style and diction were suitable for an English Iliad, 
they should be for an English Antigone. Milton had borrowed 
from Sophocles: let him repay the debt! Strangely enough, his 
own drama, Samson Agonistes, seems to have exerted no influence 
whatever on these translations of the very works on which it was 
modelled. 

Aside from the fragment of Philoctetes put into blank verse by 
Hamilton of Bangour about 1750, the influence of Milton in this 
field was first seen in Amyas Bushe's Socrates, a Dramatic Poem 
(1758). This was not made from a Greek drama, however, but was a 
rendering, ''and, in most parts, a Hteral one, of Plato's dialogues 
. . . digested . . . into five regular acts," with rimed choruses. 
Although "on the whole not ill executed . . . ," comments the re- 
viewer, it is "in many parts very dull, languid, and prosaical," — 
notwithstanding its decidedly Miltonic style, he might have added, 
as these lines will show: 

Must you not confess 

That realms and cities, which have foremost stood 

In the records of fame, for arts polite 

And wisdom's lore renown'd, have ever held 

The gods in veneration high? 2 

^ Pages 21, 36. For James Hurdis's treatment of the same story, in his Panthea 
(1790), see above, p. 261, n. 3. Lady Burrell also follows Milton in her V Allegro 
{Poems, 1793, ii. 239). 

2 Crit. Rev., vi. 89-94. I have not seen the poem itself. 



TRANSLATIONS: GREEK DRAMA 347 

The year in which Socrates appeared Thomas FranckHn brought 
out the first part of what wa.s long to remain the best EngHsh render- 
ing of Sophocles. The splendid march of the hexameter and the 
lyric beauty of the choruses Francklin does not reproduce at all, but 
he does convey impressively if not brilhantly the nobiUty and simple 
grandeur of his great original. He has tried to be natural, — an un- 
usual aim in any translation of the classics made at that time, — and 
accordingly has many passages as conversational as this: 

Let me hear the sound 
Of your long-wish 'd for voices; do not look 
With horror on me, but in kind compassion 
Pity a wretch deserted and forlorn 
In this sad place. ^ 

True, he often carries this laudable purpose too far, to the detriment 
of his verse, as when he writes, 

The man thou seek'st is not far from thee . . . 
.... cease then thy search, and tell me 
Wherefore thou com'st; "^ 

yet there is not a page, or hardly a speech, in his entire volume that 
does not bear the stamp of Paradise Lost. Here is an example: 

Behold before thee Paean's wretched son, 

With whom, a chance but thou hast heard, remain 

The dreadful arrows of renown'd Alcides, 

Ev'n the unhappy Philoctetes, him 

Whom the Atridae and the vile Ulysses 

Inhuman left, distemper'd as I was 

By the envenom'd serpent's deep-felt wound.^ 

The latter part of this passage was thus rendered in 1788 by 
Robert Potter, the next writer to put Sophocles into blank verse: 

Philoctetes; whom the Chiefs, 
And Cephallene's king, here basely left 
An outcast, and alone, with dire disease 
Consumed, and tortured with this gnawing wound 
By the fell serpent's venom'd tooth impress'd.^ 

This extract may be too brief to show that it is from a more diffuse, 
but more formal and Miltonic and hence less spirited, translation 
than Francklin's. It also does scant justice to Potter, the best of 
whose versions — he rendered all the dramas of the Greek trium- 
virate into blank verse — was his first, Aeschylus, which he brought 
out in 1777. "As most things have been said, and well said in our 

* Philoctetes, II. i. 7-1 1. ^ Philoctetes, II. i. 40-46. 

* Ajax^ I. i. 8-1 1. ■* New ed., 1820, p. 306. 



348 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

language," remarked William Taylor, "it is often necessary to 
plagiarize; Potter could not translate Aeschylus without stealing 
from Milton and Gray." ^ Here are some of the thefts: 

I heard his thund'ring voice, I saw his form 
In bulk and stature proudly eminent; 
I saw him roll his shield, large, massy, round. 
Of broad circumference: it struck my soul 
With terror. On its orb no vulgar artist 
Express 'd this image, A Typhaeus huge. 
Disgorging from his foul enfoulder'd jaws, 
In fierce effusion, wreaths of dusky smoke, 
Signal of kindling flames.^ 

Between 1781 and 1783, when Potter published the two volumes 
of his Euripides, Michael Wodhull's rendering of the same dramatist 
appeared (1782). Less formal and Miltonic than Potter's, it is also 
less interesting and less impressive, — duller, more diffuse, and more 
prosaic. There are too many lines like that with which several of the 
plays close, 

And thus does this important business end. 

As a rule, the style is not so close to Paradise Lost as in this passage: 

As on our turrets 
We stood exalted, and o'erlook'd the plain. 
The Argive host we saw, with silver shields 
Conspicuous, from Teumessus' mount descend: 
Over their trenches in their rapid march 
Soon vaulting, to the city they drew near.' 

These were the great eighteenth-century translations of the Greek 
drama. With all their shortcomings they were the best to be had, 
and in some cases almost the only ones accessible. As they were 
better than most versions of the classics made at the time, edition 
after edition of them was called for, and they held undisputed sway 
till past the middle of the nineteenth century. Indeed, over a hun- 
dred years after they first appeared, all three were in whole or in part 
reprinted in cheap popular form. Not until the appearance of Gil- 
bert Murray's finely poetic free renderings have any later transla- 
tions of these dramas attained such vogue as those of Francklin, 

1 J. W. Robberds, Memoir of Taylor (1843), i. 329. 

* Seven against Thebes, Potter's Aeschylus (Norwich, 1777), p. 169; cf. P. L., i. 590, 
284-6, vi. 765-6. The Choephorae has the phrase "Around his gloomy eyeballs throw" 
(ib. 364, cf. P. L.,i. 56) ; also the two lines quoted on page 471 below (the suggestion of 
Allegro is not in the original), and probably other borrowings. For Potter's imitation 
of Lycidas, see Bibl. Ill a, 1759. 

' Phoenician Damsels, in Nineteen Tragedies, etc. (new ed., 1809), i. 214. 



TRANSLATIONS: GREEK DRAMA 349 

Potter, and WodhuU enjoyed. Strange to say, except for a few single 
plays no further blank-verse translations seem to have been pub- 
lished till 1865, when E. H. Plumptre brought out his excellent 
Sophocles; but since that time the number has steadily increased. 
The best of these later renderings are far more poetic than the earlier, 
more noble and simple, and much more successful in their handling 
of the lyric choruses. Their blank verse has, of course, like that of 
other poems of the time, come to be less Miltonic than that written 
in 1777; yet a suggestion of Paradise Lost still clings to a large num- 
ber of them. In many speeches it does not appear at all, while in 
some it is marked; but usually it is seen in only one or two lines out 
of five, ten, or even twenty. It is therefore difficult to illustrate, but 
a passage in which it is fairly clear may be quoted from Plumptre's 
Philodetes: 

A son of Priam, Helenos his name, 

There was, whom this man, going forth alone 

By night (I mean Odysseus, fuU of craft, 

On whom all words of shame and baseness fall) 

As prisoner took, and where the Achaeans meet 

As goodly spoil displayed him.^ 

Plumptre's renderings of both Sophocles (1865) and Aeschylus 
(1868) are distinguished by having the lyric choruses unrimed, a 
practice that was also followed by Robert Whitelaw in his Sophocles 
(1883). Passages as Miltonic as this occur throughout Whitelaw's 
able but somewhat stiff work: 

I see within the eyes of all of you 

Some fear of my intrusion, fresh portrayed; 

But shun me not, nor blame with hasty speech: 

For hither, charged with words, not deeds, I come, 

I who am old, and know that ye are strong, 

Ye and your city — in Hellas stronger none. . . . 

All with one voice insistent, since to me 

To mourn a kinsman's sufferings most belonged.* 

The year in which Plumptre issued his Sophocles saw the publica- 
tion of the first part of Anna Swanwick's Aeschylus (completed in 
1872), which, though its literary merits are slight, has often been 
reprinted in the Bohn library. The style is more Miltonic than that 
of most translations of the period, yet each line, as the following ex- 
tract shows, tends to stand apart from its fellows: 

She of her roaming hath the limit heard, 
That she not vainly to have heard may know, 

1 Lines 604-9. * Oedipus at Colonus, 729-39. 



350 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Her woes ere coming here I will relate, 
Sure pledge thus giving that my tale is true. 
Tedious array of words I shall omit, 
And of thy roamings reach at once the goal.i 

The version of the same dramatist by E. D. A. Morshead, which 
began to appear in 1877, is as much more poetic than Miss Swan- 
wick's as it is less Miltonic, but many passages, like the admirable 
opening of The Furies, certainly recall Paradise Lost: 

First in this prayer of all the gods I name 
The prophet-mother Earth; and Themis next, 
Second who sat — for so with truth is said — 
On this her mother's shrine oracular. 
Then by her grace, who unconstrained allowed, 
There sat thereon another child of Earth — 
Titanian Phoebe.^ 

Lewis Campbell's vigorous, noble renderings of Sophocles (1883) and 
Aeschylus (1890) are much hke Morshead's work. Often they do 
not seem at all Miltonic, and probably their debt is never greater 
than in these Unes : 

Earth-born Palaechthon was my sire; I am named 
Pelasgus, and bear rule o'er all this land. 
Whence, rightly named from me their sovereign, 
Pelasgian are they called who reap these fields. 
Of aU the region Strymon's holy stream 
Divides, the westward portion owns my power.^ 

Meanwhile translations of single dramas, or extracts from them, 
were appearing. Sometime before 1846 W. S. Walker rendered a 
scene from the Persae of Aeschylus,^ and in 1849 George B urges 
pubhshed a version of the Ajax as stiltedly Miltonic as this: 

Dare not 
Unfeeling thus to cast away this man 
Without a burial; nor let violence urge thee 
So much to hate, as justice to tread down.^ 

This passage is typical of C. C. CHfford's Prometheus Chained (1852) : 

Titan, give ear. Thee to thy mischief wise, 
Thee of the bitter spirit, that didst sin 
Against the Gods, to creatures of a day 
Bestowing honours, and the fire from heaven 
Stolen, thee the betrayer, I address.^ 

^ Prometheus Bound, 842-7. 

2 House of Atreus (2ded., 1889), p. 137. I have not seen Morshead's translation of 
Sophocles's Oedipus, 1885. 

3 Aeschylus's Suppliants, in Seven Plays (new ed., 1906), p. 10. 

* See above, p. 344, n. 4. " Lines 1314-17. ^ Page 41. 



TRANSLATIONS: KLOPSTOCK 35 1 

Another version of the Prometheus (together with one of the Aga- 
memnon) almost if not quite as Miltonic as Clifford's had been 
issued in America three years earlier by H. W. Herbert; and in 1873 
J. G. Brinckle published in Philadelphia a translation of the Electra 
which follows Paradise Lost as closely as this: 

He sought of Hellas' games the illustrious pageant, 
To win the Delphic prize; and when he heard 
The loud proclaim of him that heralded 
The foot-race first in order, forth he stepped, 
Magnificent, — of all to be revered. ^ 

Milton's influence on the style and diction of these later translations 
is not vital or even important, but it affords an unconscious tribute 
to the supreme excellence of his manner for the purposes of lofty 
poetry. 

If a Greek drama that uses the verse and style of Paradise Lost 
is unexpected, a German play that follows the same course is even 
more so, particularly when it comes from the flippant pen with 
which Robert Lloyd had poked fun at Milton's followers. Yet 
Klopstock's Death of Adam, which Lloyd turned into EngUsh in 
1763, is on the Greek model and in subject suggests the Christian 
epic. More was needed, however, than the occasional use of an ad- 
jective for an adverb, like "my breath Labours incessant," or of an 
inversion like "I have, of import, much to talk with Seth,"^ to make 
this decidedly conversational translation at all impressive. Klop- 
stock, "the Milton of Germany," owed so much to Paradise Lost 
that English versions of his works, even though made in the nine- 
teenth century, might very naturally be Miltonic. The four of the 
Messiah in blank verse that I have seen certainly are: that of the 
first book issued in 18 ic at Georgetown, South Carolina (the work of 
Solomon Hailing) , the brief passage from the ninth book which W. 
S. Walker translated about the same time, the anonymous rendering 
of all fifteen books that appeared in 1826, and the fragment pub- 
lished by W. S. Roscoe in 1834.^ From the last part of the anony- 
mous version many hundred lines of the original are omitted; yet, 
since the piece extends to over six hundred pages, it is surely long 
enough. As a rule, it is less condensed and rather less effective than 

in this passage : 

Tow'rd th' Asphaltic sea. 
Meantime, Obaddon, minister of Death, 
Spread his broad wing; and soon, envelop 'd thick 

1 Lines 681-5. ^ Pages 20, 14. ^ See below, Bibl. I, 1813, 1826, 1834. 



352 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

In sable clouds, upon its shore he stood, 
And call'd th' apostate angels. ^ 

Roscoe's paraphrase of a small part of the same work, which is far 
more impressive, not only uses the style of Paradise Lost but takes 
words and phrases from it: 

Him saw no eye, 

Their eyes so dimm'd by sorrow and despair, 

Save Zophiel's, herald he of hell. . . . 

From Satan sudden the dim vapour fled, 

And rob'd in terrors sate the grisly chief.^ 

At least two other German poets have appeared in an English 
dress that owes something to Paradise Lost. Salomon Gessner's 
Death of Abel was turned into "a charming poem" in "truly Mil- 
tonic" blank verse by Thomas Newcomb in 1763 ;^ a part was trans- 
lated in the same measure, from the prose rendering of Mrs. Collyer, 
by William Woty in 1770; and the whole poem was versified from 
the same prose work by W. C. Oulton in 181 1 or 1814 and by 
"M. B. C." in 1840." ^ In 1800 Stolberg's Hymn to the Earth and 
other poems were Englished by John Whitehouse, whose version 
called forth this interesting comment from the Critical Review: "His 
imitation of Milton's manner has, however, betrayed him into the 
admission of some harsh hnes, which, although not only tolerable, 
but ornamental, in so long a poem as the Paradise Lost, are alto- 
gether insufferable in so short a composition as the Hymn to the 
Earth." ^ The "imitation" is not marked. 

"The first translation from Dante . . . produced avowedly as a 
translation, in English," appeared in 1719,^ four centuries after his 
death, and, strange to say, it was in blank verse and by our old friend 

1 xii. 666-70. 

2 Poems (1834), 162. The phrases "dimmed by sorrow and despair" and "terrors 
. . . the grisly chief" are from Paradise Lost, iv. 114-15, ii. 704. Cf. also "in the dun 
air" (p. 167) with P. L., iii. 72; "girt with omnipotence" (p. 174) with vii. 194; "bold 
emprise" (p. 176) with xi. 642, etc.; "golden panoply" (p. 178) with vi. 527, 760; 
"with lingering feet And sad" (p. 188) with xii. 648; "tears such as . . . angels weep" 
(p. 188) with i. 620; and many more. Roscoe published only part of the second book, 
but from his note on page 159 he would seem to have translated the entire work. 

^ Crit. Rev., xvi. 50-55. I know the poem only from the extracts given there. For 
Newcomb's other work in blank verse, see pp. 1 10-12 above. 

* I have seen nothing but the titles of these works. 
' New arrangement, xxxi. 348. 

* Paget Toynbee, in his admirable and exhaustive Dante in English Literature (1909) , 
i. 197. The first rendering of Dante in blank verse was by Milton himself; it consisted 
of three hnes introduced into his Of Reformation, 1641 (see Toynbee, vol. i, p. xxvii). 



TRANSLATIONS: DANTE 353 

Jonathan Richardson.^ It was undoubtedly his enthusiasm for Para- 
dise Lost that led Richardson to discard rime, but his version of the 
Ugolino episode is not otherwise Miltonic. Nor is the next rendering 
of Dante, which is of the same episode, in the same meter, and by 
none other than Thomas Gray. If Richardson's translation is "not 
a brilliant performance," ^ Gray's is so little better that he never 
published it himself. Doubtless it is a youthful exercise, for it is his 
one attempt at non-dramatic blank verse, and surely the mature 
poet would have produced lines farther removed from prose than 
these: 

From his dire Food the griesly Fellon raised 
His Gore-dyed Lips, which on the clotter'd Locks 
Of th' half devour'd Head he wiped, and thus 
Began. 3 

The first complete translation of the Inferno to be printed in Eng- 
lish, that issued in 1782 by Charles Rogers, also uses blank verse. 
"Entirely devoid of any spark of poetry," and lacking "even the 
merit of being faithful," * it is too bald and prosaic to produce any- 
thing of the effect of Milton's style; yet such inversions as these do 
recall Paradise Lost: 

Whene'er a guilty Soul before him comes 
It all confesses: He the proper place, 
Well knowing, that of Hell's to be their due, 
So many times his Tail around him twists. 
As the Degrees to which he'd have it cast. 
Many before him always ready stand, 
Who forward come, and are in order tried.* 

"Shocked to think that so elegant a Poet should have so wantonly" 
given Minos a tail "and of such enormous Length," H. C. Jennings 
omitted this passage from the very free and eccentric rendering of 
the Paolo and Francesca and the Ugolino episodes that he printed 
privately in 1794.^ Jennings's blank verse, though too slightly re- 
moved from prose to be Miltonic, is better than that of Joseph 
Hume, whose lines frequently end with "the," "and," "of," or "to." 
Yet Hume's Inferno (1812), "the worst translation of any portion 

1 In his pleasantly-entitled "Discourse on the Dignity, Certainty, Pleasure, and Ad- 
vantage of the Science of a Connoisseur" {Works, new ed., 1792, pp. 184-6). On 
Richardson, see pp. 7, 10, above. 

2 Toynbee, vol. i, p. xxxi. 

^ Gray's Works (ed. Gosse, 1884), i. 157-60, where the translation as a whole was 
first printed. The last fifteen lines had appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine for 
October, 1849. 

* Toynbee, i. 383. * Canto v. 7-13. 

^ Toynbee, i. 517-22. I have not seen the work itself. 



354 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

of Dante's works ever published," ^ has some suggestion of Paradise 
Lost, as this passage shows: 

Complying; I, tight round my Guardian's neck 

Clung instantly. He, fit moment chusing, 

And a spot, when mov'd the monster's wing, grasp'd 

Hard his shaggy cov'ring: thence down his side, 

Clotted with ice, he slowly, the labor 

Great, descended. ^ 

"National custom," asserted Nathaniel Howard in 1807, "obliged 
Dante to confine his great genius to the shackles of rhyme. Blank- 
verse seems more analogous to his sublime manner." ^ If Howard 
did not reproduce that "sublime manner" and totally failed to cap- 
ture the poetic beauty of the original, he did give an idea of Dante's 
earnestness, the power of his sombre imagination, and the terse, 
austere vigor of his style. These lines are a fair sample: 

From arch to arch, by various converse led, 
Which now, my Muse intends not to record, 
We mov'd. Climbing the frontier-rock, we saw 
Another vast of Malebolge.* 

Howard's illuminating comment, "Dante . . . composed also a 
work entitled Vita Nuova, a singular narrative of his amours with 
Beatrice," ^ is on a par vdth his reason for not translating the Purga- 
torio and Paradiso, — they "are certainly too much tinctured with 
the philosophy and scholastic theology of the age, to be understood 
and relished by modern readers." ^ 

Yet there was truth in the remark; for when Gary's Dante ap- 
peared "it was noticed with praise by the Gentleman's Magazine, and 
with contempt by the Critical Review, and then for several years lay 
dead and forgotten." ^ And this was the version that Wordsworth 
regarded as "a great national work," ^ and of which Ruskin said, "If 
no poet ever was liable to lose more in translation, none was ever so 

1 Toynbee, ii. 80. ^ Quoted by Toynbee, ii. 81. I have not seen Hume's book, 

' Preface to his translation of the Inferno (1807). 

* Canto xxi. 1-4. I have noticed a few borrowings from Milton: "bedropp'd With 
vivid hues" (p. 2, cf. P. L., vii. 406, x. 527); "everduring night" (p. 16, of. P. L., iii. 
45); "high-climbing" (p. 42, cf. P. L.,m. 546); "with mazy error" (p. 87, cf. P. L.,iv. 
239); "liquid lapse" (p. 181, cf. P. L., viii. 263, of a stream in each case); "grisly 
king" (p. 205,cf. P. L.,iv. 821); " wonderous fabric " (p. 205, cf. P.L.,i. 710, of a build- 
ing in each case); "his sail-spread vans" (p. 207, cf. P. L., ii. 927, of wings in each 
case); "hurl'd headlong from the battlements of heav'n" (p. 209, cf. P. L., i. 45, 742). 

' Page xxiii. 

^ Page viii. For Howard's Blckleigh Vale and other Miltonic poems, see above, p. 
258 and n. 5. 

' Toynbee's edition of Gary's Dante, 1900, vol. i., p. lix. 

8 Samuel Rogers, Table-Talk (2d ed., 1856), 284 n. 



TRANSLATIONS: DANTE 355 

carefully translated; and I hardly know whether most to admire the 
rigid fidelity, or the sweet and solemn harmony, of Gary's verse," ^ 
This great translation, the greatest and most influential that had ap- 
peared since Pope's Homer, was begun in 1797 and published, at its 
author's expense, between 1805 and 1814. To appreciate its origi- 
nality and its faithfulness to the spirit of Dante, one should come to it 
after examining versions of the Greek and Latin classics, for it is, 
as it should be, quite unlike these. The terseness, the restraint, the 
concentrated power, of the Divina Commedia are admirably repro- 
duced in a style that achieves dignity with ease and without pom- 
posity. The liquid beauty of Dante's verse Gary did not strive for, 
but his Unes have a "sweet and solemn harmony" of their own. 
Miltonic they certainly are, but so unobtrusively, so naturally, does 
he use his Miltonisms that he may have been almost as unconscious 
of them as is the average reader. Yet they are not so much occa- 
sional as pervasive, woven into the very fibre of the style, so that 
scarcely five successive lines are free from them, — inversions, pa- 
rentheses, the use of strange words from the Latin and of adjectives 
in place of adverbs, as well as the omission of words that are nor- 
mally expressed. Traces of Milton are surely obvious enough in this 
passage : 

As to ascend 

That steep, upon whose brow the chapel stands, 

(O'er Rubaconte, looking lordly down 

On the well-guided city,) up the right 

The impetuous rise is broken by the steps 

Carved in that old and simple age, when still 

The registry and label rested safe; 

Thus is the accUvity relieved, which here, 

Precipitous, from the other circuit falls: 

But, on each hand, the tall cliff presses close.^ 

Since the appearance of Gary's work there have been over twenty 
renderings of Dante, and in almost every meter. Longfellow's re- 
markable line-for-hne version (1867), in a sort of unrimed terza- 
rima, has enjoyed a great vogue in America; but in the mother 
country, at least, *'the popularity attained by Gary's translation in 
his lifetime has been maintained unimpaired down to the present 
day, and ... it still remains the translation which . . . first occurs 

^ Stones of Venice, vol. ii, ch. vii, § xli, note. "If I could only read English," he adds, 
"and had to choose . . . between Gary's Dante and our own original Milton, I should 
choose Gary without an instant's pause." 

* Purgatory, xii. 93-102. I have noticed but one borrowing from Milton, "fledge 
with wings" {Hell, xiii. 16, cf. P. L., iii. 627); but there are probably others. 



356 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

to the mind of an Englishman on the mention of the name of Dante. 
Cary, in fact, once and for all made Dante an English possession. 



" 1 



It must be admitted that this survey of unrimed translations has 
furnished little exhilarating reading. Nor would there have been 
much more if the rimed versions had been included, for the impres- 
sion left by most renderings of the classics, whatever their meter, is 
that voiced over a century and a half ago by the Monthly Review 
apropos of Strahan's Aeneid: *'We have perused it without either 
much pleasure or much pain . . . while we were deceived from page 
to page with a faint prospect of the genius and invention of the poet, 
we bore with the languor of the English verse." ^ It is depressing to 
contrast the time and mental effort that have gone into making 
translations with the pitiful results achieved. Most are still-born, 
some have a temporary vogue, and a few are reprinted, but in a 
short time almost all, good and bad alike, are not only unread but 
unknown. 

Many of the early translators would have been more successful if 
they had never read Milton. Unconsciously, or through an imper- 
fect understanding of their originals, they transferred to the Iliad 
and the Aeneid the "elaborate and self-retarding movement" of the 
English epic. It was not simply a matter of Miltonisms of style and 
diction, for these permeated nearly all of the earlier blank verse. 
The trouble was that, under the influence of Paradise Lost, the trans- 
lators stressed unduly the dignity and sonority of Greek and Latin 
heroic poetry to the neglect of other qualities. They overlooked the 
minstrel character of Homer, his swiftness and naturalness, as well as 
the tender grace, the exquisite ease and art, of Virgil. Then, too, 
most men who have undertaken to turn the greatest poetry of the 
past into English have not possessed the requisite poetic endowment. 
The standards were, and still are, too low. People deluded them- 
selves into believing that merely respectable or passable translations 
were of value, as probably they were in Trapp's and Brady's day, 
when even the contents of the classic poems were inaccessible; but 
that was long ago. 

1 Toynbee, Dante in English Literature, vol. i, pp. 1-li. The only other translations 
of Italian writers into Miltonic blank verse that I have noticed are the fragments of 
Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered rendered by John Dennis (i 704) , Elizabeth Rowe (probably 
before 1710), and Nathan Drake (1820), and the version of Andreini's Adam made by 
Cowper and Hayley in 1791. Mrs. Monck's rendering of a fragment from Tasso (1716) 
is not Miltonic; Philip Doyne's blank- verse translation of the whole Jerusalem (Dub- 
lin, 1 761) I have not seen. 

* xxxvii. 323 (1767). 



NEED OF GOOD TRANSLATIONS 357 

Since 1750 the only reason — aside from obtaining greater accu- 
racy — for translating Homer or Virgil has been to make us feel the 
power and beauty of the poems. This few writers have done. Most 
versions of the classics are unread because they are unreadable, be- 
cause they are neither poetic in themselves nor capable of suggesting 
the poetry of their originals. Whoever reads one for any length of 
time usually does so, not because he is held by the poem, but because 
he wishes to know what the Greek or the Roman author had to say; 
and, since this can as a rule be learned more easily, more accurately, 
and quite as pleasantly through a prose translation, he generally pre- 
fers prose. Perhaps he is right ; certainly most of the men who in the 
past have undertaken to put Virgil, Homer, or Sophocles into Eng- 
lish were far more likely to write vigorous, interesting prose than to 
overcome the many difl&culties of rime, hexameter, or blank verse 
in addition to those of translation. Since Pope's day our best poets 
either have not attempted anything beyond brief experiments in 
translation or, like Cowper, have not succeeded. For of course not 
every good poet is a good translator; in fact, several of the best 
modern renderings in verse are by men not otherwise distinguished 
as poets. Wordsworth, who wrote so fine a classic poem as Lao- 
damia, could not translate Virgil or Chaucer effectively. Tennyson, 
in the opinion of many, might have given us a great rendering of 
Virgil, but he preferred more rewarding and possibly less arduous 
tasks; and unless the unexpected happens his successors will do the 
same. Undoubtedly the ideal medium for translating poetry is 
verse, not prose; but as yet few verse translations have possessed 
the advantage which theoretically they should have. They are so 
mediocre as poetry that they leave the reader wondering what there 
is that is great about Homer, Virgil, and Dante. 

Unfortunately, the percentage of English-speaking persons who 
can read the Greek tragedians or Homer in the original with suffi- 
cient ease to make the reading enjoyable is becoming perilously 
small, and the proportion even of those who can make their way 
comfortably through Virgil and Dante is relatively insignificant. If 
these master-poets are to continue a power in England and America, 
if they are to feed our civilization as they might and as it deeply 
needs, they must do jt increasinglj'- through translations, but trans- 
lations that we shall read through and not at, poems that will hold us 
much as the originals hold those who can enjoy them, that will be 
read not alone for what their originals say but for what they them- 
selves give. And happily the long development through respectable 
but mediocre work seems to have been of some value. Writers have 



3S8 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

gradually learned to be faithful to the original, at first to the letter 
and more recently to the spirit and manner. They have long since 
ceased to allow themselves such liberties as Chapman and Pope took, 
or to be content with such crudely prosaic versions as the early ones 
of Dante. Translations are becoming more and more worth while 
in themselves. 

What form will be used in the great renderings that we hope are 
to come it is idle to conjecture. G, H. Palmer has been successful 
with rhythmical prose; Gilbert Murray, who has done some of the 
finest and most popular contemporary work in this field, uses rime, 
as does A. S. Way in his many admirable translations; while C. H. 
Grandgent has recently shown how effective the difficult terza-rima 
can be made for rendering Dante. Yet both Gary's and Bryant's 
very popular works, like the recent versions of Burghclere and 
WilHams, discard rime. Logically, perhaps, the development should 
be in the direction of blank verse. If that form can be made more 
supple and rapid and kept relatively free from Miltonisms, it may 
well prove what so great a metrical master as Tennyson held it to 
be, the best of all meters for translations from the classics. 



CHAPTER XV 

TECHNICAL TREATISES IN VERSE 

Poetry was a far more common vehicle of expression in the eight- 
eenth century than it has been since. For, although almost every 
one occasionally drops into rime, amateur verses are to-day regarded 
simply as verses and do not place their authors among the poets. 
But in the days of Robert and Horace Walpole any person interested 
in literature was hkely to publish a long, ambitious poem, — an 
epic, a satire, or a treatise on rehgion, gardening, or the art of doing 
something that the author himself had never done. Nor were such 
works confined to men who made writing their chief occupation; 
there were a great many from the pens of clergymen, lawyers, phy- 
sicians, university fellows, or country gentlemen, and a considerable 
number were produced by cobblers, tailors, carpenters, by threshers 
like Stephen Duck and milkwomen hke Ann Yearsley, and even by 
children of thirteen or fifteen years. Chatterton and Burns showed 
what boys and ploughmen might do, while Southey's Lives of 
Uneducated Poets indicates that there were many others who won 
temporary success in a field where to-day they would probably not 
venture. The position of verse is further exemplified in the many 
sermons, novels, and essays that were rewritten in it, and in the 
number of long versified attacks on the slave-trade. As Mr. Saints- 
bury remarks, ''Poetry has hardly ever received more, and rarely so 
much, honour," and "for anybody who would give it [the eighteenth 
century] verse after its own manner it had not unfrequent rewards, 
dignities , . . and almost always praise, if not pudding, given in the 
most liberal fashion." ^ 

This state of affairs resulted from and led to a pedestrian concep- 
tion of poetry. The distinction between prose and verse was certain 
to be obscured in an age when there were no great poets, when the 
didactic impulse had almost supplanted the lyric, when Uterary 
leaders were interested in sophisticated city life rather than in na- 
ture and valued elegance and satirical power above imagination. 
Throughout the period there was little understanding of what sub- 
jects are suitable for poetry, of how rare is the muse's gift and how 

' Peace of the Augustans {igi6X,^ga:zgi^ 

359 



360 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

vast the difference between it and the humbler powers of the average 
person. Consequently, such distinctions as were made between 
poetry and prose were apt to be the artificial ones of rime or of 
pecuhar word-order and diction, and any scribbler was likely to 
attempt the most difiicult of literary types, the epic, and perhaps a 
Uttle later to present the public in all gravity with a rimed cook- 
book or with metrical directions for the raising of hops or children. 
The last-mentioned poems, which may be termed "technical 
treatises in verse," are among the neo-classic phenomena that we 
find most difficult to understand. Obviously they owe their origin, 
and often much more, to Hesiod's Works and Days, Horace's Art of 
Poetry, and particularly to Virgil's widely-read and admired Georgics. 
Their authors also received stimulus and sanction from numerous 
works of the kind, many of them in Latin, composed by French and 
Itahan writers of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth cen- 
turies.^ Much of their vogue, however, was due to the feeling that 
verse forms a sugar-coating for the pill of information, to the belief, 
apparently warranted, that "the same thoughts which might lie 
neglected, if published in prose, may be read with some degree of 
avidity, when a little ornamented with the graces and imagery of 
poetical diction." ^ Apparently most persons agreed with the Critical 
Review in "thinking that didactic poetry is susceptible of all the 
beauties of the epic, when properly introduced, and may be im- 
proved to more exalted purposes"^; for some seventy of these versi- 
fied technical treatises appeared between 1680 and 1820, and several 

* There is evidence that the following works found some readers among eighteenth- 
century Englishmen: Oppian's HalietUica and Cynegelica (c. 180 a.d.), Vida's De Arte 
Podica and De Bombyce (1527), G. Fracastoro's Syphilis (1530), Scevole de Sainte- 
Marthe's Paedotrophia (1584, very popular), J. A. de Thou's Hieracosophion sive De Re 
Accipiiraria (1584), Castore Durante's II Tcsoro delta Sanitd (1586), Claude Quillet's 
Callipaedia (1655), Rene Rapin's Hortorum Lihri IV ei CuUura Hortensis (1665), 
Charles A. Dufresnoy's De Arte Graphica (1668), Boileau's L'Art Poetique (1674), 
Jacques Vaniere's Praedium Rusticuni (1696, popular), Gouge de Cessieres's L'Art 
d' Aimer (1745), the anonymous L'Art de Plaire and L' Inoculation (both 1758), E. L. 
Geoffroy's Hygieine sive Ars Sanilatem Conservandi (1771), Roffet's L' Agriculture 
and I'Abbe Romans's L' Inoculation (both 1774), Pcre Andre de Rouen's L'Art de Con- 
verser (1777), Jacques Delille's Les Jardins (1782). Three such works appeared after 
1800: J. E. Despreaux's L'Art de la Danse (1806), Colnet du Ravel's L'Art de Dtner en 
Ville (1810), L. Hayois's L'Art Epistolaire (1842). For English translations of many of 
these treatises, see Appendix D, below. On the whole subject, see M. L. Lilly, The 
Georgic (Baltimore, 1919). 

"^ Preface to James Foot's Penseroso (1771). Similarly, Richard Rolt, in order to 
render a historical description of Wales "the more amusing, . . . made choice of the 
poetical diction, as that alone," he writes, "may possibly invite a great number of 
British subjects to gather a little information" on the subject (Cambria, 2d ed., I749> 
p. 25 n.). 

3 xviii. 475 (1764). 



TECHNICAL TREATISES: SOMERVILE 361 

were often reprinted. Two-thirds of them are rimed ;^ yet, except for 
the two earliest, Buckingham's Essay on Poetry (1682) and Ros- 
common's Essay on Translated Verse (1684), only those in the Mil- 
tonic measure were widely read. The first of the treatises to discard 
rime was Philips's Cyder (1708),^ which on account of its priority 
and its popularity throughout the century became, together with 
The Seasons, the model after which most works of the kind were pat- 
terned. Their exaggerated Miltonic style and diction, the introduc- 
tion of episodes, the preference for subjects connected with country 
life, all point to Philips and Thomson. 

Indeed, the writer who next entered the field, William Somervile, 
said frankly, "I shall not be asham'd to follow the Example of 
Milton, Philips, Thomson," and referred to 

Silurian Cyder ... by that great Bard 
Ennobled, who first taught my groveling Muse 
To mount aerial. O! cou'd I but raise 
My feeble Voice to his exalted Strains. ' 

Somervile was an acquaintance of Thomson's and, being twenty- 
five years his senior, took the liberty of criticizing his diction and of 
giving him the advice (which he himself sedulously followed) , 
Read Philips much, consider Milton more.* 

Somervile also read and considered Thomson; in fact, it is more likely 
to have been the success of the recently-completed Seasons than 
that of the far less popular Cyder (which had been twenty-seven 
years in print) that led him, when already past middle life, to essay 
blank verse for the first time. 

His earliest unrimed poem, The Chace (1735), is a technical treatise 
only in so far as parts of its four books are devoted to the breeding, 
training, and care of hounds and to some directions for their use. 
The popularity which it immediately won, and has never entirely 
lost,^ must have been due principally to its spirited descriptions of 
hunting the hare, the deer, and the otter, as well as (though in a less 

^ See Appendix D, below. The Monthly Review declared in 1752 (vii. 139-41) that 
works of the kind should not be written in blank verse. 

2 See above, pp. 97-100. 

^ The Chace (1735), preface; Hobbinol (1740), pp. 48-9, cf. 3-4. Somervile's name 
is spelled with one "1" in his autograph letters and in all the editions of his works 
pubUshed during his lifetime. 

* Epistle to Thomson, on his Seasons, in Anderson's British Poets, viii. 504. 

* Three editions were published the first year and at least eight others before the 
close of the century, besides the six that had been issued by 1801 with Somervile's other 
poems. There have been five printings since 1850, the last of which, with illustrations 
by Hugh Thomson, appeared as recently as 1896. 



362 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

degree) to its picturesque accounts of lion-trapping, of "the magnifi- 
cent Manner of the Great Mogul, and other Tartarian Princes . . . 
and the History of Gengiskan the Great." ^ The author of The Chace 
was an educated country squire, with little delicacy of taste or of ear; 
his style is pompous, his verse lacks variety and frequently consists 
of end-stopped lines with medial cesuras. Yet he has the excellences 
as well as the defects of his class: his principal work is vigorous, 
fresh, and readable; it often breathes of the out-of-doors and exhibits 
a quahty all too rare in poetry of the period, — gusto. Somervile 
writes about what he loves, and when at his best, as in the following 
picture of hunting the hare, succeeds in imparting his enthusiasm to 
his readers : 

They [the horses] strain to lead the Field, top the barr'd Gate, 

O'er the deep Ditch exulting Bound, and brush 

The thorny-twining Hedge: The Riders bend 

O'er their arch'd Necks; with steady Hands, by turns 

Indulge their Speed, or moderate their Rage. 

Where are their Sorrows, Disappointments, Wrongs, 

Vexations, Sickness, Cares? All, all are gone, 

And with the panting Winds lag far behind. . . . 

Hark! from yon Covert, where those tow 'ring Oaks 

Above the humble Copse aspiring rise. 

What glorious Triumphs burst in ev'ry Gale 

Upon our ravish'd Ears! The Hunters shout. 

The clanging Horns swell their sweet-winding Notes, 

The Pack wide-op'ning load the trembling Air 

With various Melody; from Tree to Tree 

The propagated Cry, redoubling Bounds. . . . 

And ardent we pursue; our lab'ring Steeds 

We press, we gore; till once the Summit gain'd, 

Painfully panting, there we breath awhile; 

Then like a foaming Torrent, pouring down 

Precipitant, we smoke along the Vale. . . . 

They 're check'd, — hold back with Speed — on either Hand 

They flourish round — ev'n yet persist — 'Tis Right, 

Away they Spring; the rustUng Stubbles bend 

Beneath the driving Storm.^ 

As a rule, Somervile's language is more natural than that of Thom- 
son or of other contemporary writers; yet in the lines just before this 
passage he writes, ''Coursers . . . fleet the verdant Carpet skim"; 
elsewhere he calls an arrow a "feather'd Death," speaks of ''the 
bright scaly Kind" that inhabit "the whelming Element," and has 
such expressions as "to Arms devote," "submiss attend," "with 

' Argument of book ii. ^ jj^ 164-258. 



TECHNICAL TREATISES: SOMERVILE 363 

Eyes deject," "th' incumbent Earth." ^ He frequently introduces 
compound epithets, uses adjectives for adverbs, and constantly in- 
verts the order of his words. That he derived these Miltonisms not 
alone from Philips and Thomson but in part directly from their 
fountain-head, is made probable by his many verbal borrowings from 
Paradise Lost,^ and by his lines, 

Majestick Milton stands alone 
Inimitably great! 
Bow low, ye Bards, at his exalted Throne, 
And lay your Labours at his Feet.^ 

Furthermore, he wrote a short piece, Hudihras and Milton Recon- 
ciled, and in Hobbinol, or the Rural Games (1740), frankly burlesqued 
"Milton's Style."'' 

1 ii. 160-61; iii. 328; iv. 3S4(cf. 436,463),447;i. 73; ii. 112 (cf.iii. 350); iii. 394, 288. 

2 For example, "nor skill'd nor studious" (i. 74, cf. P. L., ix. 42); "fly diverse" (iii. 
543, cf. P. L., X. 284); "with oary Feet" (iii. 557, cf. P. L., vii. 440); "Nature boon" 
(iv. 470, cf. P. L., iv. 242); "veil'd in clouded Majesty" (iv. 522, cf. P. L., iv. 607-8); 

Now high in Air, th' Imperial Standard waves, 
Emblazon'd rich with Gold, and glitt'ring Gems . . . 
Streaming Meteorous (ii. 384-7, cf. P. L., i. 536-8); 

From File to File he darts 
His sharp experienc'd Eye; their Order marks 
(ii. 345-6, cf. P. L., i. 567-9). See also note 4 below. 

^ Imitation of Horace, in Occasional Poems (1727), 34; quoted in Good's Studies, 63. 
* Preface, p. iii. This work, which runs to over twelve hundred lines, describes in 
heavy, mock-heroic style the dancing, wrestling (with a free-for-all fight thrown in) , 
cudgel-playing, and smock-racing of some villagers. Although it is too long and is 
seldom really amusing, it reached a third printing the year it was pubhshed and a ninth 
by 1813. Some of the following borrowings from Paradise Lost are introduced with 
humorous effect: "heav'nly Fragrance fills The Circuit wide" (ist ed., p. n, cf. P. L., 
V. 286-7); a "Front entrench'd with many a glorious Scar" (p. 13, cf. P. L., i. 601); 
arms wielded "with huge two handed Sway" (p. 25, cf. P. L., vi. 251); "ever-during 
Hate" (p. 38, cf. P. L., iii. 45); 

Like some grave Orator 
In Athens, or free Rome, when Eloquence . , . 
(p. 30, cf. P. Z,.,ix. 670-71); 

Gorgonius now with haughty Strides advanc'd 
(p. 33,cf. P. L.,vi. 109); 

Others apart, in the cool Shade retir'd 
(p. 48, cf. P. Z-.,ii. 557); 

Or to the Height of this great Argument 
(p. 49, cf. P. L.,\. 24); 

Oread, or Dryad, or of Delia's Train . . . 
And Goddess-like Deport 

(p. 52, cf. P. L.,ix. 387-9); - 



364 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

The Chace can hardly have been responsible for the lascivious 
treatise on sexual matters which Dr. John Armstrong, a fellow- 
countryman of Thomson's, published anonymously the following 
year as The (Economy of Love (1736). As such a production could 
scarcely have helped the reputation of a physician of note who was 
the friend of ladies like Fanny Burney, Armstrong tried in later edi- 
tions to excuse it as a "juvenile Performance . . . chiefly intended as 
a Parody upon some of the didactic poets"; and ''that it might be 
still the more ludicrous," he added, "the Author in some places af- 
fected the stately Language of Milton." About the language there 
can be no question; but the burlesque element is dubious, particu- 
larly as Armstrong's next work, The Art of Preserving Health (1744), 
is exactly the sort of piece he professed to parody. This oft-reprinted 
"prophylactic lay," which Lord Monboddo declared to be "the 
best didactic poem, without dispute, in our language,"^ reads to-day 
quite as much like a burlesque of Paradise Lost as does its prede- 
cessor. Besides making use of a few Miltonic phrases,^ and of such 
expressions as "adust," "prof uses," "obnoxious" to change, "ex- 
travagant" branches of a tree, fogs "involve" a hill, Euphrates "de- 
volves" a flood,^ it is "replete" with words like "glebe," "swains," 
"meads," "humid," "tumid," "turgid," "gehd," and with periph- 
rases like "venous tubes" (pores), "recremental fume" (blood), 
"Pomona's store" (apples), "fleecy race" (sheep), "Muscovy's 
warm spoils" (furs), "dun fuliginous abyss" (smoky air), "essay 
Their flexible vibrations " (breathe), and — his chefs d'oeuvre — " fre- 
quent The geUd cistern" (take cold baths) and "th' attenuated 
lymph Which, by the surface, from the blood exhales" (perspira- 
tion).'^ Armstrong, who was sufficiently intimate with his fellow- 

Know'st thou not me? false Man! not to know me 

Argues thyself unknowing. . . . 

Thou knew'st me once 
(p. 62, cf. P. L.yiv. 827-30). Somervile's Field Sports (1742), an unrimed poem of about 
three hundred lines devoted principally to hawking, is virtually a supplement to The 
Chace. 

1 Origin and Progress of Language (2d ed., 1786), iii. 166. Armstrong's Art contains 
some two thousand lines divided into four books, which treat of air, diet, exercise, and 
the passions. 

2 For example, "cold and hot, or moist and dry" (i. 26,cf. P. I,.,ii. 898),"thechear- 
ful haunts Of men" (iv. 152-3, cf. Comus, 388). The (Economy of Love has "and with- 
out Thorn the Rose," and 

The Sapient King . . . 
Held Dalliance with his fair Egyptian Spouse 
(pp. 22-3, cf. P. L., iv. 256, ix. 442-3)- 

' i. 182 (also ii. 322); ii. 344, 193, 370; i. 311; ii. 361. 

* i. 93; iii. 254 (cf. 276), 476, 84, 48s; i. 86, 171-2; iii. 292-3; i. 168-9. Even the 



TECHNICAL TREATISES: ARMSTRONG 365 

Scot to have been the subject of one and the author of three stanzas 
in the Castle of Indolence, was probably not a little influenced in his 
Miltonisms by Thomson's usage. Such lines as these inevitably 
recall The Seasons: 

I burn to view th' enthusiastic wilds 

By mortal else untrod. I hear the din 

Of waters thundering o'er the ruin'd cliffs. 

With holy rev'rence I approach the rocks 

Whence ghde the streams renown'd in ancient song. 

Here from the desart down the rumbling steep 

First springs the Nile; here bursts the sounding Po 

In angry waves; Euphrates hence devolves 

A mighty flood to water half the East ; 

And there, in Gothic soHtude recUn'd, 

The chearless Tanais pours his hoary urn. 

What solemn twilight! What stupendous shades 

Enwarp these infant floods! Thro' every nerve 

A sacred horror thrills, a pleasing fear 

Glides o'er my frame. The forest deepens round; 

And more gigantic still th' impending trees 

Stretch their extravagant arms athwart the gloom.' 

The prosody of this passage is not typical of the Art of Preserving 
Health, fully a third of which is made up of single lines that have 
clearly been "passed through the strainer of the heroic couplet." 
A number of these are somewhat sententious and quotable, and 
occasionally there is one as good as 

While the soft evening saddens into night ; ^ 

but such verses, like the passage previously quoted, give too favor- 
able an impression of their author's work. 

If Armstrong's productions are not exactly what he would have 
termed "Pegasean flights," they seem such in comparison with the 
heavy cavorting and lumbering tread of the cobs with which Chris- 
topher Smart and Luke Booker cultivated their Hop-Gardens. The 
poems on the Eternity, Immensity, Omniscience, Power, and Good- 
ness of the Supreme Being, with which Smart five times won the 
Seatonian prize,^ are turgid and absurd enough; but his georgic, 
which was probably written earlier, is much worse and renders still 

short passage which describes the scenes of his boyhood (iii. 75-96) has "love-sick 
swains," "meads," "the fleecy race," "painted meadows," "blooming sons," "vernal 
clouds," "I lav'd" instead of "I swam," and "soUicite to the shore The . . . prey" 
instead of " catch fish ." Such diction is the harder to understand in view of Armstrong's 
own vigorous attacks upon it in his essays "Of Language" and "Of Turgid Writing" 
{Sketches or Essays on Various Subjects, 1758), which are themselves admirably simple 
and natural. 

* ii. 354-70. 2 iii. 380. ' See below, p. 404. 



366 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

more inexplicable the lyric power that sweeps through his Song to 
David. The defects of the Hop-Garden (1752) arise partly from 
Smart's imitation of Cyder, the "graceful ease," "art," and "fire" 
of which impressed him far more than they do us.^ Instead of invok- 
ing the muses, he summons Philips to his aid: 

Thou, Hesiod! Virgil of our land, 
Or hear'st thou rather, Milton, bard divine. 
Whose greatness who shall imitate, save thee? 

As a result, we read of "Vulcanian fires," of "meads Enrich 'd by 
Flora's daedal hand," of "egregious shepherds" who 

plough Tunbridgia's salutiferous hUls 
Industrious, and with draughts chalybiate heal'd, 
Confess divine Hygeia's blissful seat, 

and are told that, after " Eurus comes " 

To hyemate, and monarchize o'er all, 

"Tellus' facile bosom" may be "meliorated with warm compost." ^ 
On his title-page Smart printed an extract from Vaniere's Praedium 
Rusticum; at the beginning of the second book he quotes from Vir- 
gil's Georgics, from which, as his notes indicate, a number of his lines 
are taken; ^ while his frank declaration, "I teach in verse Milto- 
nian," ^ makes clear his imitation of Paradise Lost even to those who 
overlook his verbal borrowings,^ the character of his other work in 
blank verse, and his three imitations of the octosyllabics, which he 
thought 'the finest pieces of lyric poetry in any language.' ® 

The Hop-Garden won no prizes ; in fact, it did not even prevent an 
indefatigable versifier and imitator of Milton, Luke Booker,^ from 
publishing another poem on the same subject and with the same 
title forty-seven years later. As a practical treatise Booker's georgic 
may conceivably have had some value; at least it sticks to its sub- 
ject, which is more than can be said in Smart's favor. But it is no 
less dull, and in the matter of simple, natural expression, though 

1 i. 278-80. ^ i. 32-3, 156-68, 329; ii. 106-27, 209. 

2 i. 269-71, 133, 104-S, 36, 41-3, 72,74, 284, 87. M. 7. 

' Compare, for example, i. 99-129 with P. L., iv. 641-56, and i. 270-76 with P. L., 
ii. 1-2, iii. 7-8; "smiling June in jocund dance leads on Long days (i. 331-2) recalls 
P. L., iv. 267-8; "bright emblazonry" (i. 364) is from P. L., ii. 513, "the vast abrupt" 
(i. 397) from P. L., ii. 409, "panoply divine" (i. 416) from P. L., vi. 760-61, "hold 
dalliance" (ii. 266) from P. L., ix. 443. 

« See above, p. 10; below, p. 404, and Bibl. II, 1752; and Poems on Several Occasions 
(1752), 179-93, where his Latin translation of Allegro is given. 

7 See above, p. 254; below, Bibls. I, 1785, 1787, 1789 n., 1798, 1799, 1805, and III 
c, 1785. 



TECHNICAL TREATISES: SMART — DODSLEY 367 

issued as late as 1799, it stands almost at the nadir of eighteenth- 
century blank verse.^ 

It is a significant tribute to the vogue this extinct genre once en- 
joyed that the leading publisher of the day and the editor of a very 
popular miscellany, who should have known what the public Uked, 
himself composed a technical treatise in verse. This ambitious 
project, Robert Dodsley's Public Virtue, was to have consisted of 
three long books, one on "Agriculture," a second on "Commerce," 
and a third on "Arts"; but, as the fifteen hundred lines of the first 
book (1753) were coldly received, the busy and modest pubHsher 
decided to "stick to his last," a forbearance that will be appreciated 
by any one who exercises his ingenuity in discovering to what process 
the following description applies : 

Continu'd agitation separates soon 
The unctuous particles; with gentler strokes 
And artful, 'soon they coalesce: at length. 
Cool water pouring from the limpid spring 
Into a smooth-glaz'd vessel, deep and wide, 
She gathers the loose fragments to an heap.^ 

Though so eminent a critic as Leshe Stephen has declared, "Dyer's 
longer poems are now unreadable," ^ there are " a grateful few " who, 
like Wordsworth, think of John Dyer as one "of our minor poets — 
minor as to quantity — of whom one would wish to know more," * 
and who recognize "that excellent neglected poem, the Fleece," ^ as 
the most successful example of a once-popular literary type. Yet as 
a whole the work probably is unreadable, for a great many of its 

' An advertisement printed at the back of Booker's Malvern announced that the 
Hop-Garden was "intended as a counterpart to Philips's Cyder"; there is a quotation 
from Cyder on the title-page, and the opening invokes the muse who inspired Phihps's 
work. To the 1 200 lines of his original poem Booker appended a " Sequel" of 457 lines, 
deaUng principally with ale. 

2 iii. 391-6. Agriculture is divided into three cantos, the first of which is introduc- 
tory, the second treats of soils and trees, and the third of the harvest, minerals, and the 
care of animals. Yet no "young Agricolist" would have derived much assistance from 
this vague, rambUng, rhapsodic effort. Dodsley also wrote a rimed Beauty, or the Art oj 
Charming (1735), and a rimed Art of Preaching, in Imitation of Horace (1738). 

3 Diet. Nat. Biog. 

* See his sonnet to the "Bard of the Fleece," and his letter to Alexander Dyce, Jan.12, 
1829. One would particularly Uke to know more of the years Dyer spent in a wild and 
romantic part of South Wales, of his rambling through the neighboring country as an 
itinerant artist, and of his trip to Italy to study painting. 

^ John Scott, Amwell, 16 n. The Fleece received extended and very favorable notices 
in both the Monthly Review and the Critical (xvi. 328-40, iii. 402-15) and was highly 
praised in Drake's Literary Hours (1798, nos. 10, 11). Johnson's severe strictures in 
his Lives of the Poets are, on the whole, sound. 



368 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

twenty-seven hundred lines are prosaic and wearisome and not a 
few are absurd. To enjoy it one must overlook serious and fre- 
quently-recurring faults and read only for the touches of natural 
beauty and for the phrases, Unes, and occasional passages that reveal 
the vision and the voice of a true poet. 

Dyer is a curious compound of one of his earlier and one of his 
later contemporaries, — Thomson, who knew him, and Gray, who 
thought he had "more of poetry in his imagination, than almost any 
of our number." ^ The Fleece (1757) has much the same subject- 
matter as The Seasons and is marked by the same breadth, sonorous 
pomp, and love of the country; while Grongar Hill, in its restrained 
and somewhat fastidious lyricism of the semi-romantic classicist, 
recalls Gray. All Dyer's poems exhibit a fineness and distinction 
which Gray possessed but which Philips, Thomson, Somervile, Arm- 
strong, Young, and most of their successors lacked. These qualities 
were native to him and would have characterized his verse if, like 
Grongar Hill, it had all appeared the same year as Winter; but, inas- 
much as The Fleece was pubhshed as late as 1757, it was inevitably 
influenced by a poem so similar and so highly successful as The 
Seasons. Such lines as these are Thomson through and through: 

The fluctuating world of waters wide, 

In boundless magnitude, around them swells; 

O'er whose imaginary brim, nor towns, 

Nor woods, nor mountain tops, nor aught appears, 

But Phoebus' orb, refulgent lamp of light, 

Millions of leagues aloft : heav'n's azure vault 

Bends over-head, majestic, to its base, 

Uninterrupted clear circumference.^ 

Yet Dyer must have derived a good deal directly from Thomson's 
original. As a young man he studied painting under Jonathan 
Richardson, whose enthusiasm for Paradise Lost knew no bounds;^ 
he modelled his octosyllabics upon those of Milton at a time when 
the 1645 volume was little appreciated; he introduced into The 
Fleece phrases from Allegro, Comus, Lycidas, and Paradise Lost;^ and 

* See Thomson's letters to Mallet, June 13 and Aug. 2, 1726 (Philobiblon See, 
Miscellanies, 1857-8, iv. 12, 32, first pagination); Gray's letter to Walpole, 1748 {Corre- 
spondence of Gray, Walpole, etc., Oxford, 1915, ii. 91). 

* iv. 29-36. 

* See pp. 7, 10, 22 above, and 424 below. 

* For example: "dews impearl'd" (i. 363, of. P. L., v. 746-7); "liquid lapse" (i. 532, 
of. P. L., viii. 263, of a stream in each case); "the soothest shepherd" (i. 631, cf. Comus, 
823); "honours due" (i. 678, cf. Allegro, 37); "Nor taint-worm shall infect the yean- 
ing herds" (i. 6go, d. Lycidas, 46); "light fantastic toe" (i. 692, cf. .4Wegfo, 34); "the 



TECHNICAL TREATISES: DYER 369 

he adopted most of the pecuharities of Milton's style and diction, 
including some that play little or no part in The Seasons. For ex- 
ample, he carried inversion, apposition, the use of compound epi- 
thets and of adjectives for adverbs or nouns, much farther than did 
most writers of blank verse ;^ and he may have derived from Milton 
his fondness for repetitions like 

The little smiling cottage warm embow'r'd, 
The little smiling cottage, where at eve, 
or 

Wisdom, wit, and strength, 
Wisdom, and wit, and strength, in sweet accord; 

and for such lists of things as 

Woods, tow'rs, vales, caves, dells, cliffs, and torrent floods, 
or 

Beast, bird, air, fire, the heav'ns, and rolling worlds.* 

When the lists are made up of proper names that stir the imagination 
and add to the sonorous roll of the lines, they are almost certainly 
influenced by Paradise Lost, as will be felt in passages like these, 
with which The Fleece abounds : 

Darwent's naked peaks, 
Snowden and blue Plynlymmon, and the wide 
Aerial sides of Cader-yddris huge. 

The cloudy isles, 
Scyros, and Scopelos, and Icos, rise. 
And Halonesos: soon huge Lemnos. 

Caria, and Doris, and Ionia's coast, 

And fam'd Tarentum, where Galesus' tide. 

Rolling by ruins hoar of ancient towns, 

level brine" (ii. 246, of. Lycidas, 98); "inwrought with mystic forms" (ii. 607, of. 
Lycidas, 105); "audience pure . . . Though few" (iii. 4-5, of. P. L., vii. 31); "usefully 
succinct" (iii. 41, cf. P. L., iii. 643, of garments in each case); "dropping gum" (iv. 
106, cf. P. L., iv. 630); "Sabean frankincense" (iv. 122, cf. P. L., iv. 162); "world 
of waters" (iv. 606, cf. P. L., iii. 11); 

Early fruits, 

And those of frugal store, in husk or rind; 

Steep'd grain, and curdled milk with dulcet cream 

Soft temper'd 

(i. 706-9; cf. i. 35, iv. 237-8, and P. L., v. 341-2, 347). There are references to Sabrina 
in i. 679, iii. 587; and in i. 162-3, where England's great men are mentioned, Milton is 
the only poet named. 

1 There are six compound epithets in the first forty-five lines of The Fleece and eight 
in twenty-four lines of book ii (151-74). 

^ i. 120-21; ii. 487-8 (see also i. 569-70, 703-4, iii. 104-7, iv. 255-8 — quoted p. 371 
below); i. 657; iii. 23 (see also i. 180-81, iii. 580, iv. 458-61, 614, etc.). 



370 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Through solitary vallies seeks the sea. 
Or green Altinum. 

Pactolus, Simois, or Meander slow. 

Oby, and Irtis, and Jenisca, swift. ^ 

This fondness for proper nouns led Dyer to make many adjectives 
from them, as Dorchestrian, Herculanean, Biscaian, Segovian, 
Ammonian, Tripontian, Hinclean, Hyperborean, Lappian, Silurian, 
Cambrian, Apulian, Turdetanian, Salopian, Dimetian, Menapian. 

Yet he did not, like many writers of the time, adopt these Milton- 
isms blindly, through ignorance of how to write blank verse without 
them. To be sure, he had by no means assimilated them completely, 
and, as both his inspiration and his taste were uncertain, he is fre- 
quently wooden, mechanical, even absurd. But, just as he had in- 
stinctively adopted the verse of Paradise Lost, he fell naturally into 
its style and diction because they were congenial to him and because 
he saw that through them he could secure certain results which he 
greatly desired. Like Thomson and not a few other writers of the 
day, Dyer was fond of large effects, of splendor and magnificence; 
he disliked limitations and loved sonorous, rolling lines, of which he 
wrote not a few. His earliest blank verse, The Ruins of Rome, which 
is grandiose throughout and really impressive at times, showed un- 
mistakably his leaning in this direction i^ and, though the subject of 
The Fleece demands a humbler strain, he repeatedly rises out of it in 
passages like this : 

Hail noble Albion! where no golden mines, 
No soft perfumes, nor oils, nor myrtle bow'rs, 
The vig'rous frame and lofty heart of man 
Enervate: round whose stern cerulean brows 
White-winged snow, and cloud, and pearly rain, 
Frequent attend, with solemn majesty: 
Rich queen of mists and vapours! ' 

The entire fourth book, which, though poetically the best part of 
the work, seems to have been overlooked by the majority of readers, 
is given over to a subject that has little direct connection with fleece, 
to a highly romantic and imaginative picture of the extent of English 
commerce. The progress of English wool round the world to strange 
ports and coasts famed in story, 

Bukor, Cabul, and the Bactrian vales, 
And Cassimere, and Atoc, on the stream 
Of old Hydaspes, Porus' hardy realm; 

^ i. 193-s; ii. 243-5,316-20; iv. 110,469. '^ See the extract given on p. 240 above. 
' i. 153-9. The seventeen lines that follow are in much the same strain. 



TECHNICAL TREATISES: DYER 371 

is described as if it were the voyage of Cleopatra's barge. Here is 
one of the best passages : 

The flat sea shines Uke yellow gold, 
Fus'd in the fire; or like the marble floor 
Of some old temple wide. But where so wide, 
In old or later time, its marble floor 
Did ever temple boast as this, which here 
Spreads its bright level many a league around? 
At solemn distances its pillars rise, 
Sofal's blue rocks, Mozambic's palmy steeps, 
And lofty Madagascar's gUttering shores. ' 

This love of the grand and stately, strengthened by an admiration 
for Milton and Thomson, led in The Fleece, as it had in The Seasons, 
to turgidity and absurd periphrases, to what Johnson called "cloath- 
ing small images in great words." ^ Dyer spoke of sheep as the "bleat- 
ing kind," the "fleecy tribe," and the "frail breed"; of wool as 
" their yearly tribute," "the costly burden," "the downy vesture," 
"our fleecy wealth," "our spungy stores"; and he urged the "jolly 
swains" to "seek the sounding caves Of high Brigantium" and re- 
ceive from "Vulcan's strong sons " 

The sharpen'd instrument, that from the flock 
Severs the fleece.^ 

But at other times no one can be more bald and prosaic. For "gouty 
ails, by shepherds term'd the halt," he urges to "salt again, th' util- 
ity of salt Teach thy slow swains," and a few lines beyond discusses 
"th' infectious scab" and says that 

Sheep also pleurisies and dropsies know.* 

Frankness and ornate diction are combined somewhat amusingly in 
the suggestion that "wise custom," 

Or ere they 've past the twelfth of orient morn, 
Castrates the lambkins: necessary rite.^ 

Yet the greater part of these absurdities are the fault, not of 
Dyer's treatment, but of the kind of work he was writing. A techni- 
cal treatise in verse must inevitably fail either as a treatise or as a 
poem ; it must be so general as to be of little practical value or so de- ; 
tailed as to be dull and unpoetic. Dyer constantly adorned and' 
"lifted" his subject, but he did not, like Luke Booker, omit such 

1 iv. 345-7, 254-62. 2 "Dyer," in Lives (ed. Hill), iii. 346. 

' i. 285, 380, 393, 582, 240, 584, 635, ii. 134; i. 555-63 (he explains in a note that he 
refers to "the forges of Shefl&eld . . . where the shepherds shears . . . are made"). 
* i. 276, 283-4, 286, 294. " i. 347-9- 



372 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

"circumstances" as were "either not very important, or unsus- 
ceptible of poetical ornament." ^ He was deeply interested in the 
wool industry, and, feeling that much of his country's greatness de- 
pended on it, desired to make his work of real service. Hence it was 
that he wrote what has been termed "the most extensive industrial 
poem of the eighteenth century, if not of English literature." ^ His 
practical suggestions are by no means confined to sheep-raising; for 
he discusses intemperance, smuggling, the digging of canals (includ- 
ing one through Panama), the relation of machinery to the laborer's 
welfare, the encouragement of foreign artisans to settle in England, 
and the erection of county houses in which the poor should be com- 
pelled to work on wool. As Wordsworth pointed out. 

The character of Dyer, as a patriot, a citizen, and a tender-hearted friend of 
humanity, was, in some respects, injurious to him as a poet; and has induced 
him to dwell in his poem upon processes which, however important in them- 
selves, were unsusceptible of being poetically treated. Accordingly, his poem is 
in several places, dry and heavy; but its beauties are innumerable, and of a high 
order. In point of imagination, and purity of style, I am not sure that he is not 
superior to any writer in verse since the time of Milton.' 

This last is going too far; yet the 

Bard of the Fleece, whose skilful genius made 
That work a living landscape fair and bright, 

does at least deserve that 

pure and powerful minds, hearts meek and still, 
A grateful few, should love his modest Lay, 
Long as the shepherd's bleating flock shall stray 
O'er naked Snowdon's wide aerial waste; 
Long as the thrush shall pipe on Grongar Hill! * 

Such a treatise as The Fleece may well have served some useful 
purposes ; but no such justification can be found for the thirty-seven 
pages of Robert Shiells's Marriage (1748), which ceases to be dull 
only when it becomes lascivious, or for the eighty-six pages of 
Richard Shepherd's Nuptials (1761), in which the dreariness of 
fatuous, sentimental advice concerning matrimony is unrelieved. 

' Preface to his Hop-Garden. 

2 C. A. Moore, Hunmnitarianistn in the Periodical Essay and Poetry, 1^00-1760 
(doctor's thesis, Harvard, 1913) ,227. Mr. Moore points out that Dyer emphasized the 
dignity and importance of trade and sought to remove the social stigma attached to it 
(see The Fleece, ii. 611-59 and the whole of book iv). 

^ Letter to Lady Beaumont, Nov. 20, 1811. See also Wordsworth's postscript to his 
Duddon sonnets, and Knight's Life of Wordsworth (Edin., 1889), ii. 324. 

^ Wordsworth's sonnet to Dyer. In the fourth line from the end I have changed 
"shall" to "should" and "thy" to "his." 



TECHNICAL TREATISES: GRAINGER 373 

Shiells quotes from Paradise Lost on his title-page, and praises its 
author as "the lawful Prince of Song," one "possess'd of all the Wit 
Which lavish Nature grants." ^ Shepherd also alludes to Mil- 
ton, but there could in any case be no question as to the source of a 
style like this : 

In Quest of Happiness, attractive Spring 
And Soul of Action, see the motley Tribe 
The nuptial Bark with Foot adventurous cUmb.^ 

A later Ars Amoris, given to the world in 1807, is Martin Kedgwin 
Masters's Progress of Love. It is as harmless as Shepherd's, and like 
it abounds in comments and advice on many aspects of love and 
marriage. Masters had very Kttle education,^ but neither Oxford 
nor Cambridge could have given him a less natural style and diction : 

Again to wake the monitory strain 

And charm to mute attention heedless j'outh, 

My theme imperious bids.^ 

In the Stigar-Cane, which Dr. James Grainger published in 1764, 
information is "pour'd abundant," though unfortunately his theme 
is now, as before he visited the West Indies, one 

Whence never poet cropt one bloomy wreath.* 

Some few leaves of laurel might possibly have decked Grainger's 
brow if he had possessed even a rudimentary sense of humor; but 
what hope is there of a man who uses the blank verse of Paradise 
Lost for a solemn treatment of "rats and other vermin," of weeds 
(including the " cow;-itch ") , of "the greasy fly," of the "care of 
mules" and the "diseases to which they are subject," as well as for 
a discussion as to whether, in planting, "dung should be buried in 
each hole, or scattered over the piece"? ^ The bard himself when 
he came to some of these subjects and was trying to "adorn" them 
"in poetic garb," exclaimed, "Task how difficult!" and queried, 

Of composts shall the Muse descend to sing, 
Nor soU her heavenly plumes? 

Yet he not only answered in the affirmative and concluded the 
subject with 

Enough of composts, Muse; of soils, enough, 

1 Page 33. 

2 i. 284-6; the reference to Milton is two lines earlier. Shepherd was a voluminous 
writer, but only three of his other poems show the influence of Milton (see Bibls. I 
and II, 1761). 

' See the preface, p. viii. 

* ii. 423-5. In iii. 20 he quotes "cheerful haunts of men" (cf. Comw^, 388). 

' i. 301. * See the arguments prefixed to the first three books; and ii. 123. 



374 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

but later said of negroes, "Worms lurk in all!" ^ This willingness to 
call a spade a spade would indicate a dislike of periphrases, were it 
not for expressions like "lave . . . with the gelid stream," "Raleigh's 
land" (Virginia), "the chlorotic fair; " 

Tho' coction bid 
The aqueous particles to mount in air; 

Bristol, without thy marble, by the flame 
Calcin'd to whiteness, vain the stately reed 
Would swell with juice mellifluent. ^ 

Grainger has, in fact, practically all the vices of his franlcly-acknowl- 
edged models, "pastoral Dyer, . . . Pomona's bard, And Smart and 
Sommerville. " "In their steps," he wrote, " I shall always be proud 
to tread," and added, " Vos sequor , . . Quod vos imitari aveo."^ He 
also wished to imitate Hesiod and 

lofty Maro (whose immortal muse 
Distant I follow, and, submiss, adore).* 

Obviously, the style and diction of these lines and of those pre- 
viously quoted are derived from Milton or his followers, and the 
numerous verbal borrowings indicate that the direct influence of 
Paradise Lost was not slight.^ 

^ i. 297-9 (the word "adorn" is significant), 218-19, 255; iv. 103. 

2 iii. 321-2, 259; iv. 150; iii. 347-8, 381-3. Grainger uses such words as "fuga- 
cious," "endemial," "depurated," "perflation," "vermifuge" (i. 368; ii. 120; iii. 253, 
340; iv. 312). The influence of the couplet prosody upon the Sugar-Cane is unmis- 
takable: in the first passage to which I open (ii. 440-47) eight successive lines end with 
semicolons or periods, while within the lines there are only commas. The most interest- 
ing passage in the poem is that which pictures a hurricane, a calm, and an earthquake 
(ii. 270-426). In iii. 539-42, 566-7, Grainger expresses an appreciation of the beauty 
of the ocean which was unusual at the time. 

^ i. 12-13; preface, vi-vii. 

* ii. 132-3. 

' For example: "Pan, Knit with the Graces" (i. 61-2, cf. P. L., iv. 266-7); "draw 
her humid train" (i. 147, cf. P. L., vii. 306); "hold amorous dalliance" (i. 387, cf. P. L., 
ix. 443); "fruit of vegetable gold" (i. 429, cf. P. L., iv. 219-20); "shed genial influ- 
ence" (i. 437, cf. P. L., vii. 375, of the heavens in each case); "at shut of eve" (ii. 11, 
cf. P. L.,ix. 278); "scales bedropt with . . . gold" (ii. 142, cf. P. L., vii. 406, of fishes in 
each case); "in her interlunar palace hid" (ii. 311, cf. Samson, 89); "to gratulate . . . 
the beginning year" (iii. lo-ii, cf. P. R., iv. 438); "Fountain of being" (iii. 212, cf. 
P. L., iii. 375, of God in each case); 

Tho' no herald-lark 
Here leave his couch, high-towering to descry 
The approach of dawn, and hail her with his song 
(iii. 558-60, cf. P. R.,u. 279-81). For other borrowings, see iii. 256-7 (cf. Comus, 95-7), 
274 (cf. P. L., xi. 484, 488), 372-3 (cf. Allegro, 133-4); iv. 8 (cf. P. L., iii. 7, invoca- 
tion in each case) , 554-81 (cf . P. L. , iv. 641-56) ; and the following, which are indicated 
by quotation-marks, i. 90-92 (from Comus, 21-3), 132 n. (from P. L., ix. iioi-io), 
iv. 500 (from P. L., iv. 138). Grainger's Solitude is modelled upon Penseroso. 



TECHNICAL TREATISES: MASON 375 

Grainger knew a good deal about his subject and evidently tried 
to make both the poem and the notes to it useful ; but he did not go 
so far as WiUiam Mason, who asserted that, since "to amuse was 
only a secondary motive" with him in writing his English Garden, 
he thought the 'copious and complete Commentary, which the 
partiality of a friend had induced him to write upon it, would 
be of more utiUty than the poem itself would be of entertain- 
ment.' ^ It is very doubtful, however, if the vain and much-flattered 
"Scroddles" really thought anything of the kind, for he embelHshed 
his treatise with two long episodes and devoted more attention to 
nature descriptions and other adornments than did his fellows. Such 
a subject as fence-making, for example, which he found an "in- 
grateful" task, he was not content to expound "in clear preceptive 
notes," but tried 

by modulation meet 

Of varied cadence, and selected phrase, 

Exact yet free, without inflation bold, 

To dignify .2 

As regards both varying the cadence and writing without in- 
flation Mason succeeded better than most writers did,^ although 
if the "Simplicity" whom he twice summoned to preside over his 
poem ^ had really responded he would probably have been not a 
little discomfited. But in his subject-matter, landscape architecture, 
he did vigorously uphold simpHcity and naturalness against regu- 
larity or formality, and on this account, as well as because of his 
imitation of Milton's monody, octosyllabics, and sonnets, he is of 
some significance in the romantic movement. His romanticism and 
his poetic powers are seen at their best in lines like these: 

1 Preface. ^ ii. 247-55. 

' He has, to be sure, a good deal of the " verdant mead" and "crystal stream" sort 
of thing, and occasional enormities like the reference to an ice-house (iv. 95-8) as 
the structure rude where Winter pounds 
In conic pit his congelations hoar, 
That Summer may his tepid beverage cool 
With the chill luxury. 

Yet neither this passage, nor that which describes the "thundering death" from the 
"feUtube" 

Whose iron entrails hide the sulphurous blast, 

Satanic engine! 

(ii. 215-18), is typical of the poem. Mr. Beers is, therefore, hardly fair to Mason's 
georgic (by no means the most absurd of its class) , when he quotes these two passages 
to bear out his remark, "The influence of Thomson's inflated diction is here seen at its 
worst" {English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, 124-5). 
* At the beginning of the first and fourth books. 



376 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Happy art thou if thou can'st call thine own 

Such scenes as these: where Nature and where Time 

Have work'd congenial; where a scatter 'd host 

Of antique oaks darken thy sidelong hills; 

While, rushing through their branches, rifted cliffs 

Dart their white heads, and glitter through the gloom. 

More happy still, if one superior rock 

Bear on its brow the shiver 'd fragment huge 

Of some old Norman fortress; happier far, 

Ah, then most happy, if thy vale below 

Wash, with the crystal coolness of its rills. 

Some mould'ring abbey's ivy-vested waU.i 

The influence of the style, prosody, and perhaps diction of Para- 
dise Lost upon this passage will surprise no one who is familiar with 
Mason's slavish imitation of Milton's early works. Phrases from 
these works, as well as from the epic, are introduced into the English 
Garden,^ together with references to their author and a tribute to 
''Milton's inimitable description of . . . Eden" as a prototype of the 
English garden.^ 

Mason divided his work into four parts (published separately in 
1772, 1777, 1779, and 1782), devoting the first book to general prin- 
ciples and the later ones to their practical application, — to sunken 
fences, the arrangement of shrubbery, and the like. A similar plan 
was adopted by Richard Polwhele, the Devonshire clergyman who 
flitted industriously, but without either genius or that "infinite ca- 
pacity for taking pains" which is alKed to it, between poetry, topog- 
raphy, literary history, and theology. Polwhele regarded the English 
Garden as "the faultless Model of Didactic Poetry," * and in imita- 
tion of it divided his English Orator into four books, in the first of 
which he considered "general Precepts" and in the other three 

> i. 374-85. Unfortunately, Mason favored the erection of "old Norman fortresses" 
for barns and of "mould'ring abbeys" as screens for ice-houses, etc. (iv. 79-109). His 
grotto (iv. 1 1 8-31) also reminds one unpleasantly of Pope's; but he at least appreciated 
the ocean (iv. 1 10-14). 

^ For example, "Contemplation imp Her eagle plumes" (i. 152-3, cf. Comus. 377-8, 
and the sonnet to Fairfax, line 8); "the gadding woodbine" (i. 433, cf. Lycidas, 40); 
"airs of Dorian mood" (iii. 502, cf. P. L.,\. 550); "huddling brooks" (iii. 522, cf. Comtis, 
49S); "glinun'ring glade" (iv. 656, cf. Penseroso, 27); 

The spicy tribes from Afric's shore, 
Or Ind, or Araby, Sabaean plants 
Weeping with nard, and balsam 

(iv. 234-6, cf. P. L., iv. 162-3, V. 293, and Comus, 991). The following borrowings are 
indicated by quotation-marks: i. 239 (Allegro, 133), 453-9 {P. L., iv. 240-63), iii. 370 
(P. L., ii. 628), iv. 458-62 (P. L., iv. 248-51). 

^ i. 448-66, and note v. (p. 392). 

* English Orator, iv. 334 n. (on p. 6 of the "Notes"). 



•TECHNICAL TREATISES: POLWHELE 377 

applied these precepts to the eloquence of the bar, the senate, and 
the pulpit. He also followed Mason in issuing his work in parts 
(1785-9) and in adopting the style, diction, and prosody of Paradise 
Lost} Here, however, the similarity ends, for the English Orator 
affords no relief from the pompous dulness of such lines as these : 

Hence the Strength 
Of Argument, whate'er its destin'd End, 
Educe; and to the litigated Point 
Apply, not careless of forensic Forms.^ 

Hartley Coleridge could, therefore, hardly have been famihar with 
Polwhele's work when he wrote of the English Garden, "We will not 
. . . say that it is the dullest poem we ever read, but it is assuredly 
one of the dullest we ever attempted to read." ^ Much less could he 
have known the twelve hundred lines which Thomas Gibbons, the 
author of some forty or fifty works, issued in 1772 under the title 
The Christian Minister. The following bare, prosaic passage from 
Gibbons's tract is in marked contrast to Polwhele's turgidity: 

Let ev'ry Action, ev'ry Look arise 
From what you feel within. Address your Flock 
Much as you would address a Friend, who ask'd 
Your sentiments on some momentous Point.* 

The Essex literary society of which Polwhele was a contentious 
member also included a literary physician, Hugh Downman, who 
wrote Miltonic blank verse, octosyllabics, and sonnets, and dis- 
cussed the sonnet form with the author of the English Orator.^ This 
work may, indeed, have been influenced by Downman's Infancy, or 
the Management of Children, which, as it appeared in three parts in 

1 In his notes to i. 65 and iv. 654 Polwhele quotes from Milton's Of Education and 
Paradise Lost, and at the opening of his fourth book takes a line from the latter {P. L., 
i. lo-ii), refers to Ithuriel's spear, and summons the "Muse of Fire" 

whom God's own Bard 
Sounding to epic Notes his Harp, invok'd. 

For other poems of Polwhele's that show the influence of Milton, see Bibls. I, 1787, 
1787 w., 1794-6 w., 1798, and III c, 1790 w.; for his sonnets, Bibl. IV, 1777- w. 

2 ii. 37-40. 

^ Northern Worthies (1852), ii. 348. It seems to me that, although the English 
Garden is far from being a joy forever, it is not particularly dull for those who are 
interested in its subject. 

* i. 291-4. Gibbons was a dissenting minister whom Johnson "took to" (Boswell's 
Life, ed. Hill, iv. 126). For his brief translations and original pieces in Miltonic blank 
verse, see Bibl. I, 1745 w., 1750, 1772. 

^ Some of the letters that passed between the two men are printed in Polwhele's 
Traditions and Recollections (1826) and Reminiscences (1836). For Downman, see be- 
low, pp. 471, 495 n. 2; Bibls. I, 1760 w., 1774-6, 1787 w., 1803; II, 1761 w., 1767 w., 
1792; IV, 1767-. 



378 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

1774, 1775, and 1776, preceded Polwhele's treatise by ten years. In- 
fancy is a versified Care and Feeding of Children, and seems to have 
occupied much the same position in the eighteenth century that Dr. 
Holt's work does in the twentieth. To-day no physician would think 
of composing a poem on the subject, and no mother of buying such 
a production if it were composed; yet seven editions were called for 
by the mothers of that time. Downman's popularity must have 
been due principally to his detailed, sensible, and somewhat ad- 
vanced treatment of a subject that has wide appeal.^ He divided 
his poem into six books, which discuss the early care of the child, its 
diet, clothing, exercise, and diseases. Like the author of the English 
Garden, he invoked 

Simplicity, who hates 

The swelling phrase bombast, the insipid term 

Pompously introduced; 

but his conception of this lady was even more curious than Mason's, 
for he commonly wrote after this fashion, 

Nice, and perhaps erroneous in their plan, 

The younger animals as yielding less 

Of due nutrition, and digested slow, 

Some disallow. That, food prepared from those 

Of growth mature, thro the intestinal maze 

Less tardily proceeds, we not deny.^ 

This style, vicious in itself and quite unsuited to the subject, prob- 
ably owed not a little to Akenside, whose elegant but frigid dignity 
seems particularly to have attracted Downman.^ Yet the poem is 
not without interest, for the defects of expression cannot entirely 
obscure the author's enthusiasm, good sense, and poetic feeling. 

Infancy was reprinted as late as 1809, when the vogue of the versi- 
fied technical treatise was about over. Apparently but eight works of 
the kind were written in the nineteenth century, and three of these, 
including T. P. Lathy 's Angler (18 19), are in rime, while a fourth, 
Jerome Alley's Judge (1803), is taken up principally with fulsome 
praise of an Irish chancellor.^ Of another Angler, which W. H. 

1 For example, he urges light, loose clothing for infants, says their legs and feet 
should be uncovered until they can walk, and condemns "the cradle's most absurd 
Pernicious motion" (iv. 99 ff., 303-7; v. 201-2). 

^ ii. 14-16; iii. 267-72. He recognized some of his themes as "unanimating," and 
"strove to adorn" them (iv. 100, 103). An amusing attempt at such adornment is his 
" descant" on pinning the baby's "vesture" (iv. 149-59). I^^ iii- 526-8 he praises the 
"polisht taste," "art," "rural wildness, and simplicity" of the English Garden, and in 
the lines immediately preceding commends Armstrong. 

^ See iii. 518-21; iv. 505-14. 

* Lord Clare, who had recently died. The 1558 lines of this dull work contain such 



TECHNICAL TREATISES: DOWNMAN 379 

Ireland published in 1804 over the name "Charles Clifford," and of 
T. F. Dihdms Bibliography (1812), only the first books were issued; 
but Dibdin's poem was privately printed, and the failure of Ireland's 
dull piece largely given over to digressions proves nothing as to the 
popularity of the literary type to which it belongs. John Vincent's 
Fowling, for example, met with no such indifference when it appeared 
four years later, although it may have owed its second edition to 
pleasant descriptive passages like the following: 

As up the rugged path I press, how wide 
The prospect opens, but not here bedeck'd 
From Summer's varied and fantastic loom. 
But clad in mantle coarse of sober brown 
And dusky purple mix'd; one homely hue 
Stretches unvaried round, save where some rock 
Lifts its gray forehead. ^ 

Except for Grahame's British Georgics (1809),^ Fowling seems 
to have been the last technical treatise of any importance. For over 
a hundred years this form in which our great-grandfathers found 
pleasure has been extinct, and for obvious reasons. Verse is no 
longer a means of attracting us to a dull subject, and for practical 
purposes we now demand a direct, scientific, accurate treatment of 
a matter such as is possible only in prose. More than this, we are 
now agreed that poetry is not adapted to handbooks of agriculture 
or of hygiene, and we realize that the ornament and buckram with 
which eighteenth-century bards tried to make such works seem 
poetic only render them ridiculous. "Familiar images in laboured 
language have," as Johnson said, "nothing to recommend them but 
absurd novelty," and, as most of these artless treatises on the arts 
are written in verse which "seems to be verse only to the eye,"^ 
they constitute a dreary waste profitable only for a better under- 
standing of the period and refreshing only in their incidental descrip- 
tions. 

From the number of these didactic poems and the frequency with 
which some of them were reprinted, it might appear that their dull- 
ness and absurdity were not felt at the time. But the age of Fielding, 

gems of expression as "plausive cherubs" (i. 305), "if she not find within her procreant 
glebe" (i. 37), "by pure comments sage, meantime, illumes" (iii. 703). 

' Fowling: a Poem in five books, descriptive of Grouse, Partridge, Pheasant, Woodcock, 
Duck, and Snipe Shooting (1808, 2d ed. 1812). I know of the poem only from W. H. K. 
Wright's West-Country Poets (1896, pp. 459-60), and from the Monthly Review (enl. ed., 
Ix. 320), which speaks well of it. Vincent was an Oxford man who died in Bengal in 
1 81 8 as chaplain of the East India Company. 

^ See above, pp. 269-70. 

^ See "Somervile" and "Milton," in Lives (ed. Hill), ii. 320, i. 193. 



38o THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Goldsmith, and Sterne was far from lacking a sense of humor, and 
was by no means so blind as it is sometimes pictured. ''All the 
assembled wits burst into a laugh," we are told, when Grainger (who 
was reading his Sugar-Cane at Sir Joshua Reynolds's), "after much 
blank- verse pomp . . . began a new paragraph thus : — 

'Now, Muse, let's sing of rats.^ . . . 

'What could he make of a sugar-cane? '" exclaimed Johnson, on hear- 
ing the story. " ' One might as well write the Parsley-bed, a Poem; or 
The Cabbage-garden, a Poem.^^' ^ Of The Fleece the same apostle of 
common sense remarked, "The subject, Sir, cannot be made poetical. 
How can a man write poetically of serges and druggets?"^ Nor 
were such criticisms unusual. The letters and diaries of the period 
record opinions of contemporary verse that are often no more flatter- 
ing than our own, and the critical reviews could hardly have been 
more caustic than they were or more unsparing in their condemna- 
tion of hterary mediocrity. The reviewers seem, indeed, to have felt 
that most of the poetry and fiction published in the latter half of the 
eighteenth century was not worth reading.^ 

Even the more popular periodicals found amusement in the ram- 
bling bombast of the versified tractates, for in 1802 the European 
Magazine parodied them in what was alleged to be a fragment of the 
Art of Candle-Making, a Didactic Poem, in twenty books. The author 
had certainly felt the absurdity of imitating Paradise Lost in such a 
treatise : 

Inspir'd by Hops, a bard has sung its praise, 

And prov'd its influence in narcotic strains: 

The Cyder-making and Wool-combing arts 

Have both found bards their secrets to explain. . . . 

Say, why should Candles be alone unsung? 

No! I shall sooner seize th' advent'rous pen; 

And, though unequal to so great a task, 

Shall, in Miltonic numbers, nobly dare 

To paint the labours of a Melting day. 

He had also noticed, as the "argument of book i" shows, the dis- 
cursiveness, the fondness for moraUzing and for classical allusion, 
that mars these preceptive lays : 

1 Boswell's Johnsonied. Hill), ii. 453-4. ^ lb. 453. 

' The defects of Smart's H op-Garden, for example, are admirably pointed out and 
traced to their causes in the Monthly Review, vii. 139-42. Perhaps the greatest fault of 
the eighteenth-century reviewers was their tendency to speak well of a mediocre work if 
it taught morality and religion. Here is a typical comment: "If this work has but a 
slight claim to praise for its poetical or philosophical merit, it yet challenges our appro- 
bation for being the zealous advocate of religion and virtue ' {ib., enl. ed., 1800, xxxii. 
438). 



TECHNICAL TREATISES PARODIED 381 

Subject proposed — Invocation — The subject proved to be of great impor- 
tance to Poets — To Lovers — The tale of Hero and Leander — To Moralists 

— The resemblance a Candle bears to the life of Man — The story of Prome- 
theus, the inventor of Candles — Remarks on the Mythology of the Ancients — 
Ovid — Hesiod — Homer — Of Machinery — The early ages fond of it, and 
why? — The story of Theseus and Ariadne — Light-houses, the great benefit 
of — Eddystone Light house — Candles probably made use of on this occa- 
sion among the Ancients — Light — Sir Isaac Newton — Optics — Astron- 
omy — Chronology — Age of the World not known — Moses — Bonaparte 

— Friar Bacon — Conclusion.^ 

' Europ. Mag., xlii. 424-6. The extensive notes, another feature of the piece, make 
it clear that Smart, Philips, and Dyer are the writers parodied. 



CHAPTER XVI 

PHILOSOPHICAL AND RELIGIOUS POETRY 
Philosophical Poetry 

If the regions through which we have just passed have seemed a 
rugged waste, those that lie before us form no land of dreams, rather 

a darkling plain 
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, 
Where ignorant armies clash by night. 

In the realms of epic and descriptive poetry and of the technical 
treatise there are sometimes noble prospects, and, though rocks lie 
everywhere, they are often picturesquely piled and hold in their 
crannies fragrant herbs and flowers. Besides, often when the country 
is not beautiful it gains a certain interest from being unusual. No 
such interest attaches to eighteenth-century philosophical and reli- 
gious poetry; for whoever advances into that flat and sandy desert 
is likely to feel, with Satan, 

In the lowest deep, a lower deep 
StUl threatening to devour me opens wide, 
To which the Hell I sufifer seems a Heaven. 

Passing by for the present poems that are in the main not simply 
ethical but distinctively Christian, we have a group of versified reflec- 
tions or moral harangues which, though almost as destitute of real 
philosophy as of real poetry, may for want of a better term be dubbed 
''philosophical poems." The title of one of Coleridge's pieces. Reli- 
gious Musings, a Desultory Poem, would fit most of them; for, if they 
are not devoted to the exposition of deistic doctrines or the defense 
of orthodox beliefs, they consist of vague disquisitions on the benev- 
olence of God or the greatness of England, thickly larded with moral 
platitudes. That shallow but triumphant refutation of heresy, 
Young's Night Thoughts (which began to appear in 1742), was among 
the earliest of these works, and in its rambling, rhetorical treatment 
of serious subjects is typical of many of them. Pope's Essay on Man, 
the supreme example of the type, though it is rimed and is unique in 
the compact brilliance of its expression, resembles the rest in its 
lack of sustained thought. As a rule these versified reflections are 

382 



PHILOSOPHICAL POETRY: BLAIR 383 

not even amusing, much less novel or stimulating, and the obvi- 
ousness of their thought is unrelieved by any poetic beauty or power. 
In general they are like old sermons, and quite as tiresome, for the 
authors have mistaken their cacoethes scribendi for a message. 

What may perhaps be called the earliest of these poems in blank 
verse, although of course not really philosophical, are Thomson's To 
the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton and Britannia, both written in 1727. 
More typical of the later works of the class, and not much better 
than they, is his long, dull, inflated Liberty (1734-6), which says 
little that is worth the saying. 

The death of Newton also called forth nearly five hundred lines of 
tumid blank verse from ''Leonidas" Glover, then only sixteen years 
old. This effusion Glover followed with one that is no better,^ in 
which he sought to rouse the nation against the Spanish and in 
favor of a large army, — London, or the Progress of Commerce (1739). 
In another poem entitled Commerce (1751), Cornehus Arnold devotes 
two hundred and eighty-seven lines of pompous Miltonic blank verse 
to a rambling panegyric on trade. One of its few oases is this de- 
lightfully mixed figure : 

When thro' your Western Tour, with lib'ral Hand, 

In Pleasure's Cup, Humanity You mixt, 

And serv'd it round — All was tumultuous Joy! ^ 

The year before, Arnold had brought out some eight pages of un- 
rimed couplets aptly entitled Distress, which is filled with platitudes 
about benevolence and the sufferings caused by loss of money. 

Just as the Night Thoughts was beginning to appear, a little-known 
clergjrman in a small Scottish parish, Robert Blair, was putting the 
final touches on an unrimed poem similar to Young's in its gloomy 
subject-matter, its exclamations and rhetorical questions, and its 
general style, as well as in the popularity it was destined to achieve.' 
Prosodically The Grave is far closer to Paradise Lost than is Young's 
work, but otherwise it bears little resemblance to the epic. It con- 
tains, to be sure, a number of compound epithets, as *' black- 
plaster 'd," "smooth-complexion'd," "high-fed," "heavy-halting," 
"lawn-rob'd," "hell-scap'd," " big-swoln " ; ^ occasional adjectives 
used as adverbs, as in "sudden! he starts," "frolick . . . unapprehen- 
sive," "stalk'd off reluctant," "smil'd so sweet," "expire so soft"; ^ 

^ Yet Fielding praised it extravagantly in the Champion, Nov. 24, 1739. 

^ Lines 266-8. 

^ Published in 1743, it reached a sixteenth edition in 1786, and was reprinted alone 
or in collections at least thirteen times more before 1800, besides being turned into 
rime in 1790. 

* Lines 36, 235, 246, 316, 513, 590, 610. » Ljugs 63, 476-7, 587, 706, 715. 



384 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

and some verbal borrowings, as "low-brow'd," "spectres . . . Grin 
horrible," and 

The fierce Volcano, from his burning Entrails 
That belches molten Stone and Globes of Fire, 
Involv'd in pitchy Clouds of Smoke and Stench.^ 

Yet very few passages are as Miltonic as these : 

The big-swoln Inundation, 
Of Mischief more diffusive, raving loud. 

The Son of God thee foil'd. Him in thy Pow'r 
Thou couldst not hold: Self -vigorous he rose.- 

On the other hand, there are plenty of matter-of-fact lines : 

Sure! 'tis a serious Thing to Die! My Soul! 
What a strange Moment must it be, when near 
Thy Journey's End, thou hast the Gulf in View? . . . 
To tell what's doing on the other Side! . . . 
Tell us what 'tis to Die? Do the strict Laws 
Of your Society forbid your speaking . . . ? 
Never to think of Death, and of Ourselves 
At the same Tim.e? As if to learn to Die 
Were no Concern of ours.^ 

Inasmuch as The Grave is often reminiscent of Shakespeare and 
seldom recalls Milton or his followers, it may present one of the 
very few instances of an eighteenth-century unrimed poem that de- 
rived its style, diction, and prosody (for it has many hypermetrical 
lines) from the drama. At any rate, its influence — which in subject- 
matter at least was considerable since it had much to do with the 
epidemic of graveyard Hterature — was away from the excessive 
Miltonisms of the period. Yet its vigorous but often homely diction, 
and its style, which at times is strangely conversational, were not 
likely to be copied often at a time when poets were haunted by the 
fear of being prosaic. Nor would it have been a safe model. If Blair, 
a writer of some ability and power who elaborated very slowly his 
work of less than eight hundred lines, is himself often tame and flat, 
most of his contemporaries, had they followed his example, would 
probably have produced only colorless, commonplace prose. The 
English literary public was not yet ready to write or to appreciate 
Michael, and, until it was, Milton, Thomson, and later Cowper were 
the safest guides for writers of blank verse. 

1 Lines 17 (cf. Allegro, 8), 40-41 (of. P. L., ii. 845-6), 606-8 (cf. P. L., i. 233-7). 

2 Lines 610-1 1, 669-70. 

3 Lines 369-71, 373, 440-1, 472-4. 



PHILOSOPHICAL POETRY: THOMPSON 385 

The Grave was extravagantly praised as late as the nineteenth 
century, and in expression it is frequently effective, even impressive; 
but a greater master than Blair was needed to give vitality to its 
obvious, gloomy moralizings. To-day no one reads it voluntarily or 
desires to reread it; if it is known at all except by name, it is through 
Blake's remarkable illustrations. To me its most attractive lines are 
these, at the close : 

'Tis but a Night, a long and moonless Night, 
We make the Grave our Bed, and then are gone. 
Thus at the Shut of Ev'n, the weary Bird 
Leaves the wide Air, and in some lonely Brake 
Cow'rs down, and dozes till the Dawn of Day. 

Another lugubrious theme was undertaken about this time by 
William Thompson, a great admirer of 

gentle Edmund, hight 
Spenser! the sweetest of the tuneful throng. 
Or recent, or of eld.i 

Thompson diversified his long poem. Sickness (1745), with an ex- 
tended account of the palace of Disease, in imitation of the palace 
of Pride and the procession of the seven deadly sins in the Faerie 
Queene. Yet this passage has nothing of the style, the language 
(except in the lines quoted above), or the peculiar charm of Spenser, 
but is stiff with Miltonisms and patched with phrases from Paradise 
Lost. Even in his figurative visits to Spenser's tomb Thompson em- 
ploys the expression "with reverent Steps and slow."^ It was so with 
most poets. The tangible influence of the Faerie Queene was practi- 
cally restricted to pieces in the Spenserian stanza and to occasional 
borrowings of words and subject-matter. Even writers who would 
have liked to take more found — or believed — that, whereas they 
could adapt Milton for every occasion, the gorgeous Elizabethan 
allegory offered little they could use in most of their verse. 

If their adaptations of the style of Paradise Lost were not often 
happy, they seemed so to many eighteenth-century readers. It is 
not unlikely, for example, that Thompson's flamboyant descriptions 
of various diseases and his account of the patients' sufferings (written 
after his own recovery from small-pox) were at the time they were 
composed thought vivid and impressive and his turgid style not far 

^ See his Sickness, i. 276-8. Unless otherwise designated, the references are to the 
first edition, the only one with numbered lines. In the second edition {Poems on Several 
Occasions, Oxford, 1751, ii. 195-317) there are marked changes, for two of which see 
below, p. 642, n. 2. 

^ Second ed., v. 2; cf. P. L., xii. 648. Instead of this phrase, the first edition (iii. 
407) has "who knows not Spenser's tomb?" (cf. Comus, 50). 



386 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

from the sublime. A reading of the entire twenty-one hundred 
lines (and a rereading of many of them) leaves me, however, with the 
conviction that Sickness, though better than many of its contempo- 
raries, is uninteresting and uninspired. The influence of Milton 
(whom Thompson ' preferred to Virgil himself ' ^) is unmistakable, as 
these lines, descriptive of the Spenserian palace of Disease, will show: 

In sad magnificence the palace rears 

Its mouldering columns; from thy quarries, Nile, 

Of sable marble, and Egyptian mines 

Embowerd.2 

Aside from the Essay on Man and the Night Thoughts, the greatest 
and most admired philosophical poem of the century was Mark 
Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination, which, published in 1744, when 
its author was just entering upon his twenty-third year, reached a 
thirteenth edition in 1795. Akenside was the Landor of his day, 
sensitive and passionate, widely read, enthusiastic over Greek and 
Latin hterature, and sedulous to catch its fine restraint in his highly- 
finished verses. Yet both the man and his poems show a taint of 
neo-classicism from which Landor was free. He had, for example, 
"a pomp and stiffness of manner. . . . He looked as if he never could 
be undressed . . . and the laboured primness of a powdered wig in 
stiff curl, made his appearance altogether unpromising, if not gro- 
tesque." ^ There was a good deal of "the laboured primness of a 
powdered wig in stiff curl" about his Pleasures of Imagination, a 
poem in which "there is so much to admire . . . and so Httle to en- 
joy," * which has height without hft and splendor without warmth, 
and which, though it may be studied, can no longer be read. An 

1 Note to i. 405. Other references to Milton or to his work occur in i. 266 n. , 359-68 
and n., 531 n.; ii. 253-4; iii. 109-111, 275 n., 514-16. Two Unes from Paradise Lost 
are prefixed to book ii in the second edition; two more are quoted in i. 335-6 of the first 
edition, and there are a number of phrases borrowed from the epic and the minor poems, 
— "the spicy beds Of Araby the blest" (i. 313-14, cf. P. L., iv. 162-3), "irreconcil'd in 
ruinous design" (i. 332, cf. P. R., iv. 413), the strife of "hot, and cold, and moist, and 
dry" (i. 341, cf. P. L., ii. 898), "a low-brow'd cave" (i. 434, cf. Allegro, 8), "at their 
visual entrance quite shut out" (ii. 229, cf. P. L., iii. 50), "white-handed Hope" (ii. 
636, cf. Comns, 213), "a dewy-skirted cloud Fleecy with gold" (iii. 122-3, cf. P- L., v. 
187), " flowry-footed May Leads on the jocund hours" (iii. i25-6,cf. P. Z,.,iv. 267-8), 
"cedar allies" (iii. 158, cf. Comus, 990, of fragrance in each case). Thompson is fond of 
parentheses and appositives, and of such words as "horizon'd," "ignipotent," "inun- 
dant," "stonied," "flammivomous," "detrude," "effulging" and "effusing" (i. 6, 175, 
179, 437; ii. 284, 638; i. 546; iii. 127). The paraphrase of Job mentioned on page 112 
above is by another William Thompson. 

^ i- 324-7- 

^ George Hardinge to John Nichols, June 19, 1 813, in Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, 
viii. 522. 

* Saintsbury, English Prosody, ii. 491. 



PHILOSOPHICAL POETRY: AKENSIDE 387 

illuminating comment upon it is its author's remark that ''poetry- 
was only true eloquence in metre " ; ^ for the reader seems throughout 
to be listening (not always attentively) to an oration of bygone days, 
vague, flowery, learned, and, though he is not sure just what it is all 
about, undoubtedly able. 

Akenside's language is decidedly Latinized and grandiose. His 
pages "effuse" such words as effulgence, effluence, empyreal, em- 
pyrean, disparting, educing, brede, adamantine, illapse, preventing 
(anticipating), and phrases like "essential pleasure," "lucid orb," 
"the cerulean convex," "the wide complex Of coexistent orders," 
"attend His will, obsequious"; with him a cloud is "obvious to" the 
sun, planets "absolve The . . . rounds of Time," Ilissus "devolv'd" 
his stream, a task "impends," a paviKon "diffus'd Its floating um- 
brage." ^ 

Such diction was probably due in Akenside's case, as in Thomson's, 
to a fondness for the boundless and the vast. For we get no details 
and little that is definite in the Pleasures of Imagination; everything 
is vague, general, and abstract; "actual existencies," "human in- 
terests," and experiences play almost no part.^ Akenside was, for 
example, unusually fond of the out-of-doors, and has a great deal to 
say about it in his poem; yet he does not picture nature, he only 
talks about it. He never tells us what flowers are at his feet or what 
soft incense hangs upon the boughs. Very likely he did not know; 
his mind may have been indifferent to such details. At any rate, he 
mentions only the "perennial sweets" of the "balmy walks of May," 
"the rosy mead," "autumnal spoils," "the generous glebe Whose 
bosom smiles with verdure," or "the gay verdure of the painted 
plain"; ^ that is, he employs the vague, vicious poetic diction of 
Thomson and his contemporaries. 

As a result of this inflated language and involved style, of the 
abstract subject and the way in which it is treated, the course of 
Akenside's thought is hard to follow. "His images," declared John- 
son, himself no stickler for simplicity, "are displayed with such 
luxuriance of expression that they are hidden, . . . lost under super- 
fluity of dress. . . . The words are multiplied till the sense is hardly 
perceived; attention deserts the mind and settles in the ear. The 
reader wanders through the gay diffusion, sometimes amazed and 
sometimes delighted; but after many turnings in the flowery laby- 

' Mason, Memoirs of Gray (prefixed to Gray's Poems, York, 1775), 261 n. 
2 ii. 158, 226, iii. 465 (cf.ii. no), ii. 320-21, iii. 544-5; iii. 429 (cf. ii. 225, and second 
version, i. 90), i. 194-5, 594, ii. 68, 293-4. 

' Dyce, in Aldine edition of Akenside, p. Ixxxix. 
^ iii. 368-9, i. 426, ii. 288, i. 364-5, iii. 495. 



388 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

rinth comes out as he went in." ^ Even if a particular passage is 
understood, its connection with what goes before and what follows 
is likely not to be clear. Akenside intended to depict the pleasures of 
imagination, to show how they arise from the perception of greatness, 
novelty, and beauty in the natural world and the fine arts; but he 
was particularly anxious, "by exhibiting the most engaging pros- 
pects of nature, to enlarge and harmonize the imagination." ^ Yet 
instead of putting his readers in tune with the infinite he only gets 
them out of touch with the definite, with the result that few of them 
carry away from the book any clear ideas. Take these lines, for 
example : 

We hasten to recount the various springs 
Of adventitious pleasure, which adjoin 
Their grateful influence to the prime effect 
Of objects grand or beauteous, and enlarge 
The complicated joy. The sweets of sense, 
Do they not oft with kind accession flow, 
To raise harmonious Fancy's native charm? ^ 

If the gentle reader is vague as to what this is all about, let him 
imagine his state of mind after reading fifty such passages ! 

The parts of the poem most likely to impress him are those that 
prefigure Keats's doctrine as to the identity of truth and beauty and 
Wordsworth's as to the moral and spiritual power to be derived 
from nature. Mr. C. A. Moore has shown that these ideas are de- 
rived from Shaftesbury and are common to the deistic poetry of the 
time;^ but Akenside's expression of them is memorable and, in view 
of the popularity of his work and the admiration the lake poets had 
for it,^ may well have been influential. He asserts that from the 
contemplation of natural beauty man derives more than beauty: 

1 "Akenside," in Lives (ed. Hill), iii. 417. "Sir, I could not read it through," he de- 
clared to Boswell (Boswell's Life, ed. Hill, ii. 164). Gray also thought poorly of it and 
of the .ff^ywM to //(eA'aiaJj (see his letters to Wharton, April 26, 1744, and March 8, 1758, 
and Mason, March 24, 1758). 

2 From the "Design" prefixed to the poem. "And by that means," he continued, 
"insensibly dispose the minds of men to a similar taste and habit of thinking in 
religion, morals, and civil life." Hence he emphasized "the benevolent intention of 
the author of nature in every principle of the human constitution," and was careful to 
"unite ... in the same point of view" morality and good taste. 

3 ii. 69-75. 

* The Return to Nature in English Poetry (Univ. of North Carolina, Studies in Philol- 
ogy, xiv. 273-8). According to Mr. Moore, Akenside "undertook to versify almost the 
entire corpus of Shaftesbury's speculation. He included, for example, the doctrine 
that the perfect harmony of Nature is the only revelation of the Deity required by a 
reasonable creature, a spirited attack on orthodox superstition, a defense of ridicule as 
a legitimate weapon in religious debate." 

^ In the preface to the third volume of his Works, Southey acknowledges that his 



PHILOSOPHIC AI. POETRY: AKENSIDE 389 

For the attentive mind, 
By this harmonious action on her powers, 
Becomes herself harmonious. ... 

.... Thus the men 
Whom Nature's works can charm, with God himself 
Hold converse; grow familiar, day by day, 
With his conceptions, act upon his plan; 
And form to his, the relish of their souls. ^ 

These ideas receive their highest expression in that part of the poem 
(composed over a quarter of a century after the original work was 
published) which Mr. Saintsbury declares to be "not only almost 
alongside of Cowper, but very nearly in presence of Wordsworth." ^ 
In this fragmentary fourth book of the rewritten Pleasures of the 
Imagination, Akenside refers to 

Those studies which possess'd me in the dawn 
Of life, and fix'd the colour of my mind, 

to the "dales of Tyne," the "most ancient woodlands, where . . . the 
giant flood obliquely strides," and to 

The rocky pavement and the mossy falls 
Of solitary Wensbeck's Umpid stream . . . 
Belov'd of old, and that delightful time 
When all alone, for many a summer's day, 
I wander'd through your calm recesses, led 
In silence by some powerful hand unseen. ^ 

This passage is hardly closer to Wordsworth's conception of the 
spiritual functions of nature than is this other to the general char- 
acter of his blank verse: 

inscriptions and his Hymn to tkePenates were inspired by Akenside ; and William Haller 
{Early Life of Southey, N. Y., 1917, p. loS n.) points out that the mottoes prefixed to 
Southey's Poems (1797) and to Coleridge's Moral and Political Lecture (1795) and Reli- 
giotis Musings (1796) are all taken from Akenside. Note also Coleridge's Elegy imitated 
from one of Akenside' s Blank-Verse Inscriptions, his Destiny of Nations, and lines 48-64 
of Wordsworth's Lines left upon a Seat, which recall the Pleasures of Imagination. Aken- 
side had several interesting connections with romanticism. He helped Dyer oh The 
Fleece (see Aldine ed. of Akenside, p. Ixxi), he had "long been intimately acquainted 
with" Thomas Edwards, one of the revivers of the sonnet {ib. Ixxviii), and he was "a 
great admirer of Gothic architecture" {ib. Ixix). His odes, the subject of his principal 
poem, his Spenserian imitation The Virtuoso, his use of blank verse, all point towards 
the milder classicism of Gray, Mason, and the Wartons. Yet he has several poems, in- 
cluding the classical satire An Epistle to Curio, in heroic couplets; and he based the 
Pleasures itself upon some of Addison's Spectator papers. 

1 iii. 599-633- 

^ English Prosody, ii. 491. 

3 iv. 49-50, 31-45- 



390 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

For thus far 
On general habits, and on arts which grow 
Spontaneous in the minds of all mankind, 
Hath dwelt our argument. i 

Akenside's debt to Paradise Lost must be clear from the extracts 
that have been given. Parentheses and appositives, to be sure, are 
rare, and inversions, though numerous, are neither so frequent nor 
so elaborate as in most blank verse of the day. But the inflated 
Thomsonian diction shows all the Miltonic peculiarities, — unusual 
words from the Greek and Latin, words employed in their original 
but obsolete senses, uncommon hyphenated epithets, adjectives used 
as adverbs or as nouns, nouns used as verbs, and so on. The most 
objectionable of these idiosyncrasies, which are to be attributed to 
youth and to the influence of The Seasons, are in large part purged 
from the later version written between 1757 and 1770.^ The admira- 
tion for Milton implied in the use of his style and language Akenside 
expressed frankly. In his ode On the A hsence of the Poetic Inclination, 
he asks if he shall seek the "soul of Milton" in order to win back the 
muse, and immediately breaks out, 

O mighty mind! sacred flame! 
My spirit kindles at his name; 
Again my lab'ring bosom burns; 
The Muse, th' inspiring Muse returns! ' 

Later he wrote: 

Mark, how the dread Pantheon stands, 
Amid the domes of modern hands: 
Amid the toys of idle state, 
How simply, how severely great ! 
Then turn, and, while each western clime 
Presents her tuneful sons to Time, 
So mark thou Milton's name; 
And add, "Thus differs from the throng 
The spirit which inform'd thy awful song. 
Which bade thy potent voice protect thy country's fame." * 

Clearly it was Milton's character and patriotism, as well as his 
poetry, that Akenside admired. Nor was his admiration for the 

' iv. 58-61. Wordsworth's title, Influence of Natural Objects in calling forth and 
strengthening the Imagination, might serve for Akenside's work. 

* Compare, for example, i. 185-21 1 with i. 243-69 in the later version. 

' In the first edition of his Odes (1745) this was ode vi; in later editions it became 
ode X of book i, To the Muse, and the lines were changed. 

* To Francis, Earl of Huntingdon, iii. 2. Section iii. 3 of this ode is largely devoted 
to Milton, other references to whom will be found in the tenth and seventeenth odes 
of book i, the second, fourth, and tenth of book ii, and in i. 168 of the second version of 
the Pleasures. 



PHILOSOPHICAL POETRY: AKENSIDE 391 

poetry confined to the epic; for he borrowed from Lycidas,^ and 
was one of the first imitators of Allegro and Penseroso} . 

The influence of Milton should not be confused with the similar 
influence of the classics, in which Akenside was steeped. The Pleas- 
ures of Imagination undoubtedly derives in the main from the 
English Homer and his imitators, whereas the more direct and severe 
inscriptions (which influenced Southey and perhaps, tlirough him, 
Landor) suggest Greece and Rome. Yet even in them there are 
lines as Miltonic as these : 

Thus at length 
Expert in laws divine, I know the paths 
Of wisdom, and erroneous foUy's end 
Have oft presag'd: and now well-pleas'd I wait.^ 

The noble Hymn to the Naiads (written in 1746), which has the 
coolness and impersonality of the brooks and springs themselves, to- 
gether with something of the aloofness of the Epicurean gods, is con- 
fessedly an imitation of the hjonns of Callimachus.* It is of Greece 
rather than of Milton that we are reminded in these, the best lines : 

Ye Nymphs, ye blue-ey'd progeny of Thames, 
Who now the mazes of this rugged heath 
Trace with your fleeting steps ; who all night long 
Repeat, amid the cool and tranquil air. 
Your lonely murmurs, tarry: and receive 
My ofifer'd lay. To pay you homage due, 
I leave the gates of sleep; nor shall my lyre 
Too far into the splendid hours of morn 
Engage your audience.^ 

^ "Hill and dale with all their echoes mourn" (iii. 566, cf. Lycidas, 39-41). I have 
noted a few other Miltonic borrowings in the Pleasures: " the enamel'd green" (ii. 434, 
cf. Arcades, 84), "flew diverse" (ii. 640, cf. P. L., x. 284), 

Whose unfading light 
Has travell'd the profound six thousand years, 
Nor yet arrives 

(i. 204-6, cf. P. L., ii. 979-80), 

The sable woods 
That shade sublime yon mountain's nodding brow 

(iii. 286-7, cf . Comus, 37-8). There are, besides, a number of phrases, like "congregated 
floods" (ii. 282, cf. P. Z,., vii. 308) and "of each peculiar" (iii. 6, cf. P. L., vii. 368), that 
may have been suggested by the epic. 

2 See pp. 449-50 below. The first paragraph of the Pleasures makes some use of the 
Allegro-Penseroso structure (see p. 471 below). 

3 Inscription vii, The Wood Nymph. 

* Note to line 327. Dyce declares (Aldine ed. of Akenside, p. xc) that English liter- 
ature contains "nothing more deeply imbued with the spirit of the ancient world." 
^ Lines 5-13. 



392 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Yet in a note to the Hymn Akenside refers to Milton as "the only 
modern poet (unless perhaps . . . Spenser) who, in these mysterious 
traditions of the poetic story, had a heart to feel, and words to ex- 
press, the simple and solitary genius of antiquity"; ^ furthermore, 
the poem contains not a few lines as Miltonic, in everything but 
diction, as any in the Pleasures of Imagination. 

The Hymn recalls Collins's best odes, and, had it been no longer 
than they, might have been almost as good. The two poets, who 
were born the same year, seem to have drawn more of their classicism 
from Greece than from Rome (whence contemporary writers derived 
most of theirs); and each published within twelve months of the 
other a volume of odes which were unusual for the time and which 
reveal a fondness for personified abstractions and for Milton's octo- 
syllabics. But, except at rare intervals, Akenside's verse falls far 
short of ColUns's; it is seldom simple, never sensuous or passionate, 
and, notwithstanding its distinction and elegance, is almost always 
rhetoric or "eloquence" rather than poetry. 

The Hymn to the Naiads, though not published till 1758, was 
written twelve years earlier and circulated somewhat in manuscript. 
In this form it came to the attention of William Whitehead shortly 
before he was made poet laureate, and seems to have inspired his 
only serious effort in blank verse, a Hymn to the Nymph of Bristol 
Spring (1751). Whitehead's Hymn reminds one of Akenside's (which 
it mentions) not only in title but in style and diction. Its four hun- 
dred and seventy lines praise the salubrious properties of Bristol 
waters in as stiltedly Miltonic a fashion as this : 

Thee the sable Wretch, 
To ease whose burning Entrails swells in vain 
The Citron's dewy moisture, thee he hails; 
And oft from some steep Cliff at early dawn 
In Seas, in Winds, or the vast Void of Heaven 
Thy Power unknown adores. ^ 

^ Note to line 83. Lines 82-6 are obviously derived from a passage in Paradise Lost 
(iv. 275-9) which is quoted in this same note; there is also a quotation from Milton in 
the note to line 25. Akenside wrote two other pieces of blank verse, The Poet (1737, a 
parody), and A British Philippic, "occasioned by the Insults of the Spaniards, and the 
present Preparations for War" (1738, cf. Glover's London, written on the same occa- 
sion), which is more direct, simple, and vigorous, and hence less Miltonic, than most 
of his later blank verse. He also "had made some progress in an Epic poem . . . 
Timoleon" (Gent. Mag., Ixiii. 885), in which he would almost certainly have employed 
the style, diction, and prosody of Paradise Lost. 

2 Lines 54-9. The Hytnn to the Naiads is commended in lines 103-6 and note. 
Whitehead's Lyric Muse to Mr. Mason ("Dodsley's Miscellany," 1758, vi. 58-60) sug- 
gests Milton's octosyllabics in meter and in the movement of the lines. 



PHILOSOPHICAL POETRY: DRUMMOND — COOPER 393 

The influence of the Pleasures of Imagination is most obviously 
seen in the imitation of its title by other poets. Warton used it for 
his Pleasures of Melancholy (written in 1745), Rogers for his Pleas- 
ures of Memory (1792), Courtier for his Pleasures of Solitude (1796), 
Campbell for his Pleasures of Hope (1799), and William Hamilton 
Drummond for his Pleasures of Benevolence (1835). Rogers's and 
Campbell's pieces are rimed, but Drummond's thirty-four hundred 
lines are in the kind of unmistakably Miltonic blank verse that was 
in vogue a century before he wrote. They touch on almost every 
aspect of human life, while inculcating the joy and duty of kindness 
to all creatures, animals as well as men, and insisting on the goodness 
of God at work through all the evils of the world. To what extent a 
reading of the poem is one of the pleasures of benevolence may be 
surmised from these typical lines, 

How richly dight with thy magnificence, 
Yon star-bespangled concave! Wide expands 
Th' immeasurable ether; streams of Hght, 
Bright coruscations of the boreal morn. ... 1 

or from the fact that the copy in the Harvard Library has stood on 
the shelves for eighty-five years uncut! 

The deistic philosophy which inspired the Pleasures of Imagination, 
as it did much of The Seasons and of the Essay on Man, played no 
small part in other eighteenth-century poetry. One aspect of it 
furnished John Gilbert Cooper with the theme of his Power of Har- 
mony (1745), in which he attempted "to shew that a constant at- 
tention to what is perfect and beautiful in nature, will by degrees 
harmonize the soul to a responsive regularity and sympathetic 
order"; or, as he expressed it in verse, 

From these sweet meditations on the charms 

Of things external [nature, art, music] . . . 

The soul, and all the intellectual train 

Of fond Desires, gay Hopes, or threat'ning Fears, 

Through this habitual intercourse of sense 

Is harmoniz'd within, till all is fair 

^ Pages 9-10. I have noticed these Miltonic borrowings: "Siloa's brook" (p. 25, 
from P. L., i. 11); "Araby the blest" (p. 33, from P. L., iv. 163, in connection with 
odors in each case) ; "thro' unfathomed seas, Tempests leviathan" (p. 41, cf. P. Z,. , vii. 
412); "the den of loud misrule" (p. 57, cf. P. L., vii. 271-2); "hyacinthine locks" 
(p. 106, cf. P. L.,iv. 301); "wingletsof downy gold . . . Maia's son" (p. 107, cf. P. L., 
V. 282-5, of an angel in each case); 

Sabbaths return, but not to him returns 

Rest, or sweet respite 
(p. 37, cf. P. L.jiii. 41-2). On page 86 is quoted "the drop serene That quenched his 
orbs" (cf. P. Z,., iii. 25). 



394 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

And perfect; till each moral pow'r perceives 
Its own resemblance, with fraternal joy, 
In ev'ry form compleat, and smiling feels 
Beauty and Good the same.^ 

These lines are simpler, less suggestive of Thomson, than are most of 
the others; for the poem abounds in compound epithets, in a Latin- 
ized vocabulary, — ''effuse," "effulgence," "relumes," "obsequi- 
ous" (prompt to follow), "praeenjoy," "tepefying," "invests the 
boughs," "devolves his . . . stream," "obvious" pebbles,^ — and in 
other objectionable forms of poetic diction. These features, as well 
as the use of adjectives for adverbs and the elaborate and frequent 
inversions. Cooper may have derived from Milton, whose octo- 
syllabics he copied a year later ^ and whose phrasing he borrowed 
several times in this poem.^ 

Why natural beauty has the power of harmonizing the soul was 
explained in 175 1 by Shaftesbury's nephew, James Harris, in the one 
hundred and seventy Miltonic lines of his Concord. The universal 
Mind, who is also Beauty, "Himself pour'd forth" through all 
matter, animate and inanimate : 

Hence man, alUed to all, in all things meets 

Congenial being, effluence of mind. 

And as the tuneful spring spontaneous sounds 

In answer to his kindred note ; so he 

The secret harmony within him feels, 

When aught of beauty offers.' 

Many of these deistic ideas were accepted by persons who in 
general remained orthodox, — like John Duncan, for example, 
chaplain of the king's own regiment and author of a joy-dispeUing 
Essay on Happiness (1762). Duncan maintains through nearly six- 
teen hundred lines that the world was originally perfect and com- 
pletely happy, that it is still better and happier than is commonly 

' Poems on Several Subjects (1764), 83, 119. Cooper may have been influenced by 
Akenside, to whom he addressed a rimed panegyric. The Call of Aristippus (1758), and 
whom he praised in his Letters concerning Taste (1754, letter xv). 

2 Poems, etc., 97 (cf. 118), 107, 102, 90, 90, 94, 96, 109, 109. 

' See below, p. 451. 

* For example, "th' Aonian mount" (p. 88, cf. P. L., i. 15); "Chaos reign'd, And 
elemental Discord; in the womb Of ancient Night, the war of atoms . . . Anarchy, Con- 
fusion . . . Dissonance, and Uproar" (p. 88, cf. P. L., ii. 150, 894-7, 960-67) ; "congre- 
gated clouds"(p. no, cf. P. L., vii. 308); "Euphrosyne, heart-easing" (p. 112, cf. 
Allegro, 12-13); "the flow'ry field Of Enna (p. 113, cf. P. L.,iv. 268-9). "The first 
man ... in the flood A godlike image saw," etc. (pp. 119-20), seems to be derived 
from Eve's first view of herself {P. L., iv. 455-65). Something of the Allegro-Pen- 
seroso structure appears three times in the poem (pp. 87-8, 105-6, 111-12). 

' Poetical Calendar (i 763) , xii. 55-6. 



PHILOSOPHICAL POETRY: DUNCAN — OGILVIE 395 

conceived, that all evil arises from false self-love, that the happiness 
and rank of the various orders of beings — God, angels, men — de- 
pends upon the degree to which they partake of true love (benevo- 
lence), and that happiness is promoted by reason and virtue and is 
finally established in the love of God. These ideas are, however, de- 
rived much more easily from the summaries that precede the four 
books of the Essay than from the poetry itself, which, perhaps "dark 
through excessive bright," devolves its maze in this fashion: 

Not thus eludes th' angelic eye the grace 
On lapsed man residing. Unobscur'd 
By low-born mist his comprehensive view 
In thy sole essence lost, all-seeing God, 
O'er all creation's charms expatiates free.* 

The Miltonic character of these lines requires no comment; but at- 
tention should be called to a definite mention of Paradise Lost,^ to 
such borrowings from it as " the gloom of unessential night," " human 
face divine," ''the . . . wealth of Ind," "love-notes wild,"^ to the 
description of Eden (where "with sprightly glee Gambol'd the fiery 
pard" and "the smiling hours and seasons led The circling dance" 
to the songs of the birds) ,* as well as to the effect on nature of the fall 
of man.^ 

Deistic writings like these, including as they did many of the lead- 
ing productions of the time in prose as well as in verse, caused no 
small disturbance among the narrowly orthodox. One of the pens 
wielded as a cudgel in defence of the older theology was that of the 
Presbyterian divine, John Ogilvie, who entitled his last work The 
Triumphs of Christianity over Deism (1805). Forty years earlier he 
had, to his own satisfaction at least, established the faith of all doubt- 
ing Thomases and crushed the skepticism of such bolder spirits as his 
fellow-Scotsman Hume, in the three thousand lines of his inflated, 
blank- verse Providence, an Allegorical Poem (1764). Only persons 
already convinced, or those with feeble doubts, could have been im- 
pressed by the work; men of real thought, like Hume, must have 
sneered at Ogilvie 's solemn elucidation of the obvious, as well as at 

1 Pages 72-3. On page 12 Duncan refers with approval to the deists Shaftesbury 
and Hutcheson. 

2 Page 40, and note. 

^ Pages 24 (cf. P. L., ii. 438-9, of chaos in each case), 31 (cf. P. L., iii. 44), 51 (cf. 
P. L., ii. 2), 45 (cf. Allegro, 134). 

4 Pages 30-31 (cf. P. L., iv. 340-50, 264-S). 

^ Pages 40 (earth "groan'd , . . with grief" at the picking of the forbidden fruit, cf. 
P. L., iv. 780-84), 43-4 (cf. P. L., X. 651-714, and note that in each poem the animals 
"glared" on Adam). 



396 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

the anthropomorphism of his selfish, petty deity who delayed the 
coming of Christ lest man should arrogate to himself the discovery 
of His teachings, and who revealed the true religion to "a favour'd 
Few" in order that they might be properly grateful.^ 

The poem attempts to prove, through a series of visions expounded 
by allegorical personages, that without divine revelation the human 
mind is incapable of evolving a satisfactory religion, that there is a 
beneficent Providence behind floods, droughts, volcanic eruptions, 
excessive heat and cold, and the like, as well as behind the pros- 
perity of the wicked and the afflictions of the righteous. To elucidate 
these matters would have been sufficiently difficult even if Ogilvie 
had not hampered himself with "the vain stiffness of a letter'd 
Scot," ^ with a style and diction often more absurdly Miltonic than 

in these lines: 

Rash alike thou deem'st 
Of wisdom or injustice. — Grant that Heav'n 
Submiss, to Nature's glimmering search had lent 
Internal light . . . 

Then had thy thought elate disdain'd to own 
The boon conferr'd; thine all the work had been.' 

But it is unnecessary to comment on a poem that was so well char- 
acterized by a brilliant and merciless contemporary : 

Under dark allegory's flimsy veil 

Let them with Ogilvie spin out a tale 

Of rueful length; let them plain things obscure, 

Debase what's truly rich, and what is poor 

Make poorer stiU by jargon most uncouth . . . 

With bloated style, by afi'ectation taught, 

With much false colouring, and little thought . . . 

With words, which nature meant each other's foe, 

* See ii. 813-48,931-42. ^ Charles Churchill, The Journey, 148. 

' ii. 814-22. A more interesting but less typical passage is i. 653-65, which pictures 
" the romantic wild . . . mountains piled Sublime in horrid grandeur to the sky." It was 
to Ogilvie that Johnson said, "The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the 
high road that leads him to England" (Boswell's Life, ed. Hill, i. 425, and see 421). 
There appear to be some borrowings from Milton , such as " shagg'd with . . . hills, Rocks, 
desarts, woods, dales," etc. (i. 58-9, cf. Cowzw, 429, and P. Z,.,ii. 621), "with contiguous 
shades" (i. 245, cf. P. L., vi. 828), "with downy gold" (i. 258, cf. P. L., v. 282), "the 
griesly shape " (i. 326, cf . P. L.,u. 704) , " floats on the gale redundant " (i. 1022, cf . P. L. , 
ix. 502-3), "face That glow'd celestial" (ii. 240-1, cf. P. L., viii. 618-19), "hurl'd them 
headlong" (ii. 617, cf. P. L.,\. 45), "back th' astonish'd thought Recoil'd" (ii. 681-2, cf. 
P. L.,\\. 759, vi. 194), "smit with the dust of earth" (ii. 690, cf . P. L.,iii. 29) , " bedrop'd 
with" (ii. 720, cf. P. L.,x. 527, of the ground in each case), " mazes intricate " (iii. 178, 
cf. P. L., V. 622), "balmy as the citron grove" (iii. 787, cf. P. L., v. 22-3), "tinctured 
with the dies Of heav'n " (iii.9i2-i3,cf. P. L.,v. 283-5)," innumerable wings . • • fann'd 
the undulating air" (iii. 916-17, cf. P. L., vii. 431-2). Four of Ogilvie's odes are Mil- 
tonic (see Bibl. II, 1762, 1769), as is his epic Britannia (see pp. 302-3 above). 



PHILOSOPHICAL POETRY: FOOT 397 

Forced to compound whether they will or no; 
With such materials, let them, if they wiU, 
To prove at once their pleasantry and skill. 
Build up a bard to war 'gainst common sense, 
By way of compliment to Providence. 1 

There are many similarities between Ogilvie's work and James 
Foot's Penseroso, or the Pensive Philosopher in his Solitudes (1771), 
only a small part of which is of the graveyard variety. Though 
'embellished with pastoral description' (which, stilted and unpoetic 
as it is, shows that Foot had his eye on the object), the Pensive 
Philosopher is not concerned primarily with nature, but rather is 
designed "to recommend piety, the social virtues, and a love of 
liberty. It introduces . . . Penseroso," as Foot goes on to explain, 
''reflecting in his solitudes . . . upon the state of the moral and natu- 
ral, the rehgious and civil world." ^ Nothing could be more typical 
of the late eighteenth century, since the problems that have per- 
plexed mankind throughout the ages are disposed of with the 
complacent ease of narrow, insular orthodoxy. The six books are 
devoted respectively to "the State of Man"; worldly disasters and 
"the Wisdom of the Divine Government"; death and immortality; 
the wickedness of heathenism and the excellence of Christianity as 
shown through "the wisdom, power, and goodness of God in the 
visible creation"; the evils of Romanism, together with "the Bene- 
fits of Liberty, Charity, and Moderation"; and, finally, "Civil 
Government and the Glory of the English Nation." 

Foot employed blank verse because it "admits of a greater variety 
in . . . its numbers," and because "it is for the most part adopted by 
Young, Mallet, Glover, Akenside, Armstrong, Ogilvie, and in short, 
by most of the celebrated writers of the present times." ^ Thomson, 
whom he does not mention, seems to have influenced him not a little; 
and Milton, who 

plucks the palm from Maro's head; 
And far the bard of Greece or Rome exceeds,* 

gave him much more than his title. For not only are the style and 
diction clearly Miltonic, but there are many such expressions as 
"enchantments drear," the "curfew sends its swinging roar," "th' 
oblivious pool," "stores Of nitrous spume, bitumen, sulphur," 

1 Churchill, The Journey, 125-42. The unusual compound epithets that Churchill 
ridiculed are very common in Providence. 
^ Preface, p. iii. 

' Preface, p. vi. "The elegant Mr. Mason" is mentioned on the preceding page. 
* Page 294. 



398 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

"floating redundant," *'far as an angel sees," ''with horror plum 'd';^ 
and a scene in hell is unblushingly copied from Paradise Lost even in 
its phraseology .- 

Abraham Portal's Innocence (1762) need not detain us long, for 
there have probably been very few readers whom it has detained at 
all. It consists of thirteen hundred lines of jerky, turgid, decidedly 
Miltonic blank verse, the confused maunderings of a very second- 
rate mind.^ The author, an unsuccessful tradesman and dramatist 
who ended his career as a box-keeper at Drury Lane theater, seems 
to have been the embodiment of the innocence he lauds. His love 
episode is surely naive enough; for the maid, on seeing 

A Man stand guardant, all confus'd arose, 
Blushing inimitable, 

and "curtsied silent" her acceptance when the "guardant" male 
proposed in his first speech to her ! ^ 

Some years later an equally innocent author asked his readers to 

Permit the muse to dictate; she means well. 

This was a Welsh farmer's son, David Lloyd, who by teaching him- 
self Latin and Greek had become a clergyman and felt equal to writ- 
ing a poem on the Voyage of Life. ^ Lloyd invokes the muse of 

the plaintive bard immortal Young, 
Whom at an humble distance I pursue, 
So might I haply catch some vital spark 
Of his celestial fire to warm my strain.® 

1 Pages 12 (and 2S2,ci.Penseroso, 119), 23 (ci. Penseroso, 74-6), 36 {ci.P.L.,i. 266), 
78 (of. P. L., vi. 479, 512, 515, of explosives in each case), 138 (cf. P. L., ix. 503), 138 
(cf. P. i., i. 59), 138 (cf. P. L., iv. 989). 

2 Pages 140-144. The anonymous Nature (book i, Bristol, 1786, to be completed in 
five more books) , which I know only by the extract and comment in the Monthly Review 
(Ixxiv. 564), seems to be a philosophical poem on the nature of things, on motion, at- 
traction, repulsion, and the like. It is expressed in crabbed Miltonic blank verse and 
was probably suggested by the De Rcriim Natura. 

^ The effect of the fall of man on nature — plants, animals, the climate, etc. (pp. 14- 
16) — is the same as in Paradise Lost, x. 651-714; the line "High in the middle Re- 
gions of the Air" (p. 17) seems to be an adaptation of Paradise Regained, ii. 117 (said 
of a meeting-place of evil spirits in each case) ; " Smit with the Love of Science " (p. 61) 
is reminiscent of Paradise Lost, iii. 29; while 

There Love his golden Shafts employs, there lights 

His brightest Fires (p. 55), 

is certainly derived from Paradise Lost, iv. 763-4. 

* Pages 65-74. 

* First ed., 1792; enlarged, 1812. For the line quoted, see first ed., iv. 551. 

® i. 81-4. Young is also referred to in the notes to i. 238, iv. 373, vi. 415, ix. 355; and 
an imaginary "Eugenio" is addressed after Young's fashion in iv. 276, 325. 



PHILOSOPHICAL POETRY: LLOYD — FAWCETT 399 

Yet the expression "so might I haply catch" in this extract, as well 
as the phrase "this advent'rous task" a few lines later, recalls an- 
other poet whom he frequently mentions or borrows from and to 
whom, directly or indirectly, he seems far more indebted than he is 
to Young.^ There is certainly little of the staccato style, the senten- 
tiousness, or the couplet prosody that mark the Night Thoughts in 
the forty-eight hundred lines of stilted preaching that make up the 
Voyage of Life. 

In 1794 fifty-four pages of dull, unrimed couplets were published 
anonymously under the title War. To judge from the specimen in 
the Monthly Review, the critic is well within the bounds of truth 
when he suggests that "of highly-wrought pathos or impressive sub- 
limity there is not enough to stamp the writer a poet." ^ The plati- 
tudinous, invertebrate character of this work is what might be 
expected; yet one writer of the time really had something to say on 
so hackneyed but so vital a theme. For Joseph Fawcett's Art of War 
(1795) is a vigorous and thoughtful indictment of civilization for its 
approval of scientific butchery. Fawcett is concerned not so much 
with painting the horrors of war as with showing that we praise 
nations for the very crimes which we punish in individuals. He 
strips off the trappings, the empty courtesies, and the scientific 
methods under which the essential barbarism of so-called "civilized 
warfare" is concealed, and lays the blame squarely upon us all — 
cheering crowds as well as statesmen and officers. The Art of War is 
not an attractive poem. Its argument is pursued relentlessly without 
the usual digressions, episodes, or decorative passages; yet it is not 
easy to follow, and would gain if its twelve hundred and fifty lines 
were considerably condensed, if the distraction of its marked allitera- 

^ Milton is referred to in the notes to ii. 144, 292, v. 59; he is praised in v. 25-7 as 
"Britain's glorious bard, of equal fate, And equal majesty," with "old Maeonides"; 
and the phrases "kicks the beam" (ii. 299, cf. P. L, iv. 1004), "Ganges, or Hydaspes, 
far famed streams" (ii. 361, cf. P. L., iii. 436), "trace . . . 'Eternal Providence,' and 
vindicate God's righteous ways to man" (vi. 4-7, cf. P. L., i. 25-6), and "raise my . . . 
muse, to soar . . . Above the middle regions" (vii. 13-14, cf. P. L., i. 6, 14) are taken 
from his epic. 

" Mo. Rev.,en\. ed., xvi. 107-8 (1795). I ha.ve not seen this poem, or the anonymous 
War, in Blank Verse, -which, was announced in August, 1745. The Essay onWar,in 
Blank Verse, which Nathaniel Bloomfield, a tailor, published in 1803, owes nothing to 
Paradise Lost; but Peter L. Courtier's Revolutions (1796), in which a youthful lover of 
liberty attacks war and pictures the evils of the French Revolution, contains 940 lines 
of the emptiest pseudo-Miltonic rant wearisomely enhanced with personifications. 
It seems significant that Courtier's unrimed Pleasures of Solitude {Poems, 1796, pp. 97- 
114), which is quite as rambling and pointless but less objectionable in style, is followed 
by some lines To the Memory of Thomson. 



400 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

tion were removed/ and if its exuberant, decidedly Miltonic style 
and diction (which obscure the thought) were pruned. Yet there are 
a number of passages, like the one given below or the appeal to rea- 
son with which the poem closes, that, notwithstanding their stylistic 
contortions and obscurities, are admirably direct, vigorous, and even 
impressive: 

A single culprit, hark! the hounds of Law 

Hunt in full cry: but where's the custody, 

On culpable communities can shoot 

The bulky bolt? for culprit empires where 

The huge colossal constable, to whom 

Such criminals will crouch? Where stands the court, 

Of ample area, like the arch of heaven, 

Within whose walls wide-swelling, plaintiff states 

Offending states may sue, and nations wait 

Their sentence, meek submitted to the mouth 

Of so sublime a bench? ^ 

Is the answer the League of Nations? 

If the Art of War is not easy reading, what shall be said of a work 
that pursues through three cantos a style as amazing as this: 

Th' ideas receiv'd thro' sense 
Perfection souls; these wide with age augment. 
And thro' eternal time new wisdom blooms. . . . 
I see the first form'd beings, not born, on leaves 
Of roses lay; complete their frames, I see 
The hand divine around their craniums move ! ^ 

The comment of the Monthly Review on the piece — George Nason's 
Aphono and Ethina, including the Science of Ethics (1799) — was, 
"Whoever wishes to peruse dissertations on the most abstruse and 
incomprehensible subjects, on the nature and attributes of God and 
of the soul, on the connection between matter and spirit, on the 
origin of thought, on the essence of moral virtue, &c. enveloped 

1 Such lines — and there are hundreds of them — as 

Supreme that sways 
The swallow'd soul, and drives to deeds of death 

(p. 29), would be strange at any time, but are doubly so in the eighteenth century. 

- Pages 48-9. Fawcett, who had been a popular dissenting minister, reprinted this 
piece and his rimed Art of Poetry in his Poems in 1798 and issued some War Elegies in 
1801. I have noticed only two Miltonic borrowings in the Art of War, — "round she 
rapid rolls Her beauteous eyes" (p. 15, ci.P.L., i. 56) and "sportive becks, And wanton 
nods, and smiles" (p. 32, cf. Allegro, 27-8); but the war of fiends in mid-air (p. 30) 
recalls the battles in heaven. Mr. Arthur Beatty, in his essay on Fawcett (Univ. of 
Wisconsin, Sttidies in Language, etc., No. 2, 1918, pp. 224-69), which reached me after 
this chapter was written, points out the influence of Fawcett's preaching and conversa- 
tion on Godwin, Hazlitt, and Wordsworth. 

^ Mo. Rev., enl. ed., xxxii. 437-8. I have not seen the poem. 



PHILOSOPHICAL POETRY: MRS. ROBINSON — BROWN 401 

in all the profound and sublime beauties of blank-verse, may here 
by gratified. The story . . . does not occupy three pages of the 
118." 

This may be as good a place as any to notice a number of works 
which, though not really philosophical, are closer to the poems we are 
considering than to any other type. There is, for example, the 
Sketches of Beauty, "two hundred and thirty-eight pages, involved 
in mist and obscurity," which *'Vicarius" published in 1787. The 
beauty of the Sketches may be judged from this extract: , 

Along the vegetative, soul-sequester'd vale, 
Where beauty courts the silent soft recess; 
Twice pleased, modestly shines, it comes and goes 
Unmark'd: a turn will take.' 

There is also the Progress of Liberty, in which the famous "Perdita" 
Robinson endeavored by frequent exclamations and rhetorical ques- 
tions to make some fifteen hundred lines of dull, sentimental com- 
monplaces seem the inspiration of poetic frenzy : 

Shall the poor African, the passive slave, 
Born in the bland effulgence of broad day, 
Cherish'd by torrid splendours, while around 
The plains prolific teem with honey'd stores . . . 
.... shall such a wretch 
Sink prematurely to a grave obscure, 
No tear to grace his ashes? Or suspire, 
To wear submission's long and goading chain? ^ 

"0 Liberty! Liberty! how many crimes are committed in thy 
name!" 

Another work that may be mentioned here is the Renovation of 
India (1808), written in competition for a prize offered by the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh, where its author, Thomas Brown, was later a 
famous professor of moral philosophy. The six hundred and thirty 
lines of this piece present a lurid picture of Indian rites and massa- 
cres and a prediction of the blessings that are to be wrought by 
Christianity. In his oft-reprinted Lectures on the Philosophy of the 
Human Mind (1820) Brown quoted extensively from the English 
poets, particularly Pope, Young, and, most of all, Akenside, whose 
luxuriant style probably affected his own. The closing lines of his 
poem will show that it is less Miltonic and more impressive than 
many of its contemporaries : 

* Mo. Rev., Ixxviii. 80. I have not seen the poem. 

^ Works (1806), iii. 30. The poem, which was written about 1795, contains high 
praise of Milton {ib. 17). 



402 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

When rushing worlds, 
The comets of the infinite, shall flash 
Loose thro' the gloom, and the last thundering shock 
Of Earths and Suns still shout their worshipp'd God.i 

"How charming is divine philosophy !" is not the first exclama- 
tion that rises to the lips after reading the poems we have been con- 
sidering. Nor could their authors claim, with Addison, that they 
"brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and col- 
leges, to dwell in clubs and assembhes, at tea-tables and in coffee- 
houses." Many of the pieces are so destitute of real thought that 
they could have had but little influence, and almost none present 
their ideas in a way that is attractive or easy to follow. They lack 
Dryden's rare faculty of reasoning in verse, they are far too ab- 
stract, their arguments are not presented simply enough and do not 
follow naturally from one to another; digressions are numerous and 
not easily distinguished from the main thought, and too often the 
ideas are confused by an inflated, involved style and exuberant 
diction that are entirely unsuited to the purpose. The eighteenth 
century produced any number of versified treatises on Knowledge, 
Beauty, Concord, Grace, Distress, Wisdom, Commerce, Poverty, 
Truth, Money, Gratitude, HumiHty, Genius, Society, Reason, 
Benevolence, Conscience, and the Uke, in which high-sounding lan- 
guage and an ornate, involved style were used as a kind of alembic 
for converting dull prose into inspired verse. Such themes can be 
vitalized and poetized only by an unusual writer, and great poets 
were lacking. Vigorous and acute thinking was no rarity in the 
days of Berkeley, Hume, Adam Smith, Johnson, and Burke, but 
it did not get into poetry. The Essay on Man, Night Thoughts, and 
Pleasures of Imagination are typical of the philosophical poems of 
the time, which might be shrewd and clever, dull and platitudinous, 
or vague and rhapsodical, but which were pretty sure not to be well 
arranged, closely reasoned, or profound. 

Religious Poetry 

Most persons who read poetry to-day think of the rebellion of 
Satan as a myth and the story of Adam and Eve as an allegory. A 
large number, to be sure, still beHeve or profess to believe in the 
literal truth of the early chapters of Genesis, but they do not hold 
the events narrated in that part of the Bible as a vital part of their 

* Brown also wrote some blank- verse "Musings during a Night- walk" (see his 
Wanderer in Norway, 2d ed., 1816, pp. 145-60). 



RELIGIOUS POETRY 403 

creed. It was not so in the eighteenth century. Then the fall of 
man, the personality of the devil, the terrors of a real hell-fire, and 
the joys of heaven not only were believed in but were thought 
matters of prime importance; they were preached from the pulpit 
and talked of at the hearth. Particularly was this the case among 
the dissenters, who proudly counted Milton as one of their number. 
With the Puritans, and to a less extent with the Methodists, 
Baptists, and other nonconformists, a large part of whose leisure 
thinking, talking, and reading was occupied with religious matters, 
the next world was an ever-present reality. 

By this class novels and plays were severely frowned upon and 
most secular literature was looked at askance, with the result that 
such religious books as were allowed were eagerly seized upon. Little 
is said about most of these works in our histories of literature, since, 
although no popularity is so great as that of the religious book, none 
is usually so ephemeral. Who has ever heard of Elizabeth Rowe, 
whom Johnson, Klopstock, and Wieland praised? of her Friendship 
in Death, which was twice translated into French? or of her Devout 
Exercises of the Heart, which, after going through editions without 
number, was turned into blank verse? How many persons know 
that Isaac Watts wrote a book of poems that was reprinted at least 
twenty-five times? ^ Who but the student of American beginnings 
ever heard of Wigglesworth's Day of Doom, the most widely-read 
book, after the Bible, in colonial New England? Or, turning to our 
own day, who now reads the thousands of volumes of Spurgeon's or 
Talmage's sermons, or the millions of copies of Titus, Comrade of 
the Cross? Second-hand bookstores always have Young's Night 
Thoughts, Pollok's Course of Time, and Ingraham's Prince of the 
House of David in stock, but seldom find purchasers for them. Yet 
these are the books that have gone to the people's hearts, the sources 
from which the young have derived their ideals and the old received 
their consolation. They are the works that shaped popular taste to 
an extent that we do not realize, and, if literary history ever takes 
account of what is really read, they must receive attention. Of 
course, they rarely have any esthetic value. Their appeal is, in the 
main, to uncultivated readers whose taste in all the arts must neces- 
sarily be undeveloped; and their success is often due to their very 
faults, to sentimentality or morbidity, to a declamatory, rhetorical 
style or a fluent expression of platitudes. 

1 Horae Lyncae (1706). Watts's Hymns (1707) have few readers to-day; yet fifty 
thousand copies were printed annually one hundred years after their first publication. 
In America alone his songs for children were published 25 times at Hartford, 64 times 
at Haverhill, and 97 times at Boston before 1797 (W. M. Stone, Divine and Moral Songs 
of Isaac Watts, N. Y., privately printed, 1918, pp. 74-81). 



404 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

It is hard to realize that Paradise Lost could ever have been thought 
of in the same class as these melancholy moralizings long since for- 
gotten; yet such was unquestionably the position it held in the minds 
of hundreds of religious persons who were largely indifferent to its 
esthetic qualities. Even among the educated, the religious aspect of 
Miltdn's work gained it no few readers and imitators in a century 
that laid preponderant stress on the moral and spiritual side of 
literature.^ Thus it was that among the earliest uses to which the 
verse and style of the Christian epic were put was the religious, and 
that among the writers most ready to follow Milton were dissenting 
clergymen (like Isaac Watts and his friends), some of whose poems 
enjoyed great popularity and probably had considerable influence.^ 
As blank verse came to be more generally adopted, those who em- 
ployed it for religious poetry naturally became more numerous; yet 
for a long time they confined most of their efforts to short pieces, 
principally to paraphrases of chapters in the Bible.^ About the 
middle of the century their number was considerably augmented 
through the bequest of the Rev. Thomas Seaton, who in 1741 left his 
estate to the University of Cambridge on condition that the income 
should be given annually to the master of arts who wrote the best 
poem on "the Perfections or Attributes of the Supreme Being," or 
some similar subject. It was further stipulated that the successful 
piece should be printed. 

The prize was first won in 1750 by the erratic and unfortunate 
Christopher Smart, whose poem On the Eternity of the Supreme Being 
begins thus : 

Hail, wond'rous Being, who in pow'r supreme 

Exists from everlasting, whose great name 

Deep in the human heart, and every atom 

The Air, the Earth or azure Main contains 

In undecypher'd characters is wrote — 

Incomprehensible! — what can words. 

The weak interpreters of mortal thoughts, 

Or what can thoughts (tho' wild of wing they rove 

Thro' the vast concave of th' aetherial round). . . . 

As Smart received the prize the three following years, and again in 
1755, and as his poems are all in the same style as the first, he not 
only pointed out the path which the winners of Seatonian laurels 
should take but gave them a good start on it.^ His example was 
sedulously followed; for of the forty-six successful poems published 

^ See pp. 33-6 above. ^ See pp. 102-4, 109-12, above. 

' I have noticed nineteen paraphrases, mainly of Psalms, from 1712 to 1751. 
. * For Smart's other poems, see pp. 365-6 above. 



RELIGIOUS POETRY: SMART — HOBSON 405 

between 1750 and 1806 all but seven copy Paradise Lost in their 
verse and style/ many of them keeping closer to it than Smart does, 
besides often borrowing its words, phrases, and ideas. These thirty- 
nine poetical exercises by no means represent all the verse of the 
kind that was written in the competition, for some of the efforts 
published by unsuccessful aspirants are quite as Miltonic as those 
which won the prize.^ 

These Seaton pieces, which were very numerous and fairly regular 
in their appearance, must have had not a little influence upon the 
religious verse of the time. One unrimed rehgious poem of some 
length had, however, been written several years before the prize 
was awarded, Thomas Hobson's Christianity the Light of the Moral 
World, an attempt to prove that morality needs the light of revealed 
religion.^ Hobson copies the verse of Paradise Lost in this fashion: 

The palpable obscure 
Of antient Chaos and her Sister-Night 
Confounded fled. All nature smil'd serene. . . . 
At thy approach, if philosophic minds 
Conjecture truth, the vegetable race 
Spontaneous kindled into fragrant life.* 

The versified sermons, like many other eighteenth-century publi- 
cations, were often issued without the names of their authors, — 
an indication, it may be hoped, of some doubt in the writers' minds 
as to their inspiration. Such self -distrust would certainly have been 

1 All but those for 1760, 1761, 1762 (these three by the same man), 1781, 1783, 1785, 
1790. Some years the prize seems not to have been awarded, for the Cambridge Prize 
Poems (2 vols., 1808), which professes to be complete to 1806, gives but forty-six in 
fifty-seven years; and occasionally, as in 1775, two prizes were given in the same year. 
One of the pieces that does not employ Milton's blank verse, the poem for 1762, is 
clearly influenced by his octosyllabics. 

2 See Bibl. 1, 1757 (Bally), 1804 (Wrangham), and perhaps 1771 (Roberts). The 
Redemption, a Monody, by James Scott, which failed to receive the prize in 1763 but is 
printed in the Cambridge Prize Poems volumes (i. 323-32), is modelled on Lycidas. 

^ Hobson's work, published in 1745, was composed "above eight years" earlier (see 

p-is)- 

* Page 22 ("the palpable obscure" is from P. L.,u. 406). A few of the other 
phrases borrowed directly from Milton are: "darkness spread Her black pavilion" 
(p. 18, cf. P. L., ii. 960); "sin-born Death" (p. 34, ci. P. L., x. 596); "orient beam" 
(p. 34, cf. P. L., iv. 644, of the sun in each case); "universal frame" (p. 37, cf. P. L., 
V. 154, of the universe in each case) ; "optic tube" (p. 46, cf. P. Z,., iii. 590, of the tele- 
scope in each case); " self-balanc'd . . . hangs" (p. 56, cf. P. L., vii. 242); 

Whate'er is dark 
Illuminates, whate'er is low, exalts . . . 
Enlightens all the ways of God to man 

(pp. 50-51, cf. P. L.,i. 22-6). Between the title and the first line of the poem a passage 
from Paradise Lost is quoted. 



4o6 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

warranted in the case of four long religious poems that appeared 
anonymously during the first two decades after Thomas Seaton en- 
dowed the religious muse. The first of these, The Great Shepherd, a 
Sacred Pastoral (1757), consists of three dialogues that relate to the 
creation of man, his fall, and his restoration through the coming of 
Christ. Presumably it is under some debt to Paradise Lost for its 
subject-matter, as it certainly is for its style in expressions like 
"rocks th' astonish'd earth" and "descending dreadful to the dark 
abyss." ^ 

The Great Shepherd was termed by the Monthly Review a "sublime 
pastoral," an "uncommon and elegant poem"; but most religious 
verse did not fare so well. The author of the Visitations of the Al- 
mighty, Part the First (1759), seems, indeed, to have received so little 
encouragement that the visitations ceased. This first part employs 
Miltonic blank verse to portray famines and pestilences; the three 
subsequent ones were to present a veritable orgy of disasters, "In- 
surrections, War, Land-Hurricanes, Sea-Storms, Inundations, fiery 
Eruptions from Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Conflagrations"!^ Is 
it any wonder that reviewers of the first book of the anonymous 
Messiah (1763) shuddered, "Another sacred poem! dear good reh- 
gious gentlemen, why must we so often repeat to you, that poetry 
and Christianity will never mingle properly together?" The "good 
and pious sentiments" of the author, continued the critic, if "thrown 
into honest prose, might furnish ... a tolerable . . . sermon, though, 
as a poem, it is altogether contemptible." ^ As to the justice of this 
opinion, and as to the model after which the unknown author pat- 
terned his style, the reader may judge for himself : 

In being frail, 
To Adam, justly, we impute the cause; 
But for Damnation, thine, not Adam's guih, 
Incurs the punishment, and gives a hell. 
Offended wrath, cease, therefore, to arraign.* 

If these lines are not a sufficient illustration of the dearth of lit- 
erary feeling and power in most of the religious bards, one has 

* Mo. Rev., xvi. 4CXJ-402. I have not seen the poem. Another anonymous piece, 
Wisdom, which was published six years earher (1751), consists of some 250 Unes of 
tumid Miltonic blank verse devoted to religious platitudes. 

* Mo. Rev., XX. 17-20. I have not seen the piece. Of James Ogden's poem, On the 
Crucifixion and Resurrection (1762), I know nothing except that it is unrimed and that 
it did not impress the Critical Review (xiii. 363-4). 

' Crit. Rev.,xvii. 318. The poem, which I have not seen, consists of four parts, 
published separately, The Nativity, The Temptation, The Crucifixion, and The Resur- 
rection (ib. 318-20, 472, and xviii. 320). 

* Ib. xvii. 319. 



RELIGIOUS POETRY: DODD 407 

only to turn to the long, anonymous paraphrase of Ecclesiastes pub- 
lished in 1768 as Choheleth, or the Royal Preacher. In the tedious cir- 
cumlocutions of this work, the haunting verse, "Or ever . . . the 
golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or 
the wheel broken at the cistern," reappears as. 

The precious Golden Bowl itself, of frame 
Stupendous, or shrunk up, or overstretch'd. 
No longer can, with fresh recruit, supply 
Th' exhausted spirits. Gasping Nature sighs 
In vain for succour. At the Fountain-head, 
The shatter'd Pitcher can no more receive 
The vital Fluid; nor the circling Wheel 
Raise from its Reservoir, and swift repeU 
The purple Current thence to parts remote.* 

After moralizings like this, the reader may be glad to see eddies or 
ripples of any kind in the sluggish stream of eighteenth-century reli- 
gious verse; and, if he is curious as to how the clergymen of the day 
practised what they preached, he may derive unhallowed satisfaction 
from the career of the Rev. William Dodd.^ Dodd was known as the 
editor of a very popular Beauties of Shakspere (1752),^ as the author 
of a volume of poems (1767), and as a king's chaplain whom Cam- 
bridge had made a doctor of laws; but he wks most commonly 
thought of as the "macaroni parson," whose affecting sermons drew 
large audiences. He dressed elaborately, lived extravagantly, and 
kept fast company; there were stories afloat of tavern dinners, gam- 
bling, and intrigues with women; and he was known to have tried to 
get a rich living through bribery, but after a short absence in France 
he returned to undiminished popularity. The extravagance, with its 
resulting debts, which had brought him into this last difficulty led 
him afterwards to forge the name of his pupil, Lord Chesterfield, to 
a bond for £4,200. His crime was immediately detected, he was 
arrested and condemned to be hanged, and, though Dr. Johnson 
wrote a number of addresses and prayers for him and Earl Percy 
presented the king with a petition for clemency signed by twenty- 
three thousand persons, the sentence was carried out. Notoriety had 
only increased his popularity, and his execution was one of the 
famous sights of the time. 

^ Pages 1 2 1-2 (Ecclesiastes, xii. 6). 

2 Dodd might well have formed the subject of one of the "Moral Tales in Verse" 
which Thomas Hull of the Covent Garden theater published in 1797, and which in- 
cluded a blank- verse poem on the Advantages of Repentance, that had first appeared 
in 1776. 

2 Often reprinted up to 1880, and still in print. It is said to have been through 
this volume that Goethe became acquainted with Shakespeare. 



4o8 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

While in Newgate awaiting death Dodd wrote a long blank-verse 
poem, Thoughts in Prison (1777), which from its character and the 
circumstances attending its composition naturally found many 
readers. Written as it was by a vain sentimentalist, weak-willed but 
kind-hearted, fond of theatrical effects and craving publicity even in 
his private affairs, the book is filled with gloomy reflections on the 
weakness of mankind, with the culprit's forgiveness of his enemies, 
and with his Christian resignation, with everything, in short, but an 
adequate realization of his own remissness and folly. From a literary 
standpoint it is worthless, — "vapid, stilted, unprofitable," his biog- 
rapher calls it.^ In subject-matter and tone, as well as in title, its 
debt to the Night Thoughts is apparent; but the style is less ejacu- 
latory and more Miltonic, as will be seen from this description of 

prison life: 

Hear how those veterans clank, — even jovial clank, 
Such is obduracy in vice, their chains! . . . 

.... Not exulting more 
Heroes or chiefs for noble acts renown'd, 
Holding high converse, mutually relate 
Gallant atchievements worthy; than the sons 
Of Plunder and of Rapine here recount 
On peaceful life their devastations wild; 
Their dangers, hair-breadth 'scapes, atrocious feats, 
Confederate.^ 

This book was not Dodd's first tribute to Milton. More than 
twenty-five years before, when a young Oxonian, he had published 
an unrimed, mock-heroic Day in Vacation at College (1751), and in 
1758 had followed this with eleven hundred lines of blank verse 
which he termed Thoughts on the Glorious Epiphany of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. The aim of this rambling, diffuse, tedious preachment, 
Miltonic in diction and in such inversions as *'a squadron to behold 
of port divine," was to arouse a desire for the second advent of 
Christ by painting "the glories of his coming, and the happiness of 
it to behevers." ^ In a volume of his poems pubhshed nine years 
later Dodd had included two more pieces of Miltonic blank verse, 
four odes modelled on Allegro and Penseroso (one of them in the 
meter and style of Paradise Lost), and a prologue to Comus} Mean- 

1 Percy Fitzgerald, A Famous Forgery (1865), 123. On Dodd, see also Boswell's 
Johnson (ed. Hill), iii. 120-22, 139-48, 270-71. The Critical Review (xliv. 218-21) was 
both impressed and moved by the Thoughts, finding "in almost every page ... an 
appearance of the author's unfeigned contrition, piety, and benevolence." 

* Part iii, pp. 54-5, of the edition printed at Exeter, New Hampshire, 1794. 
' See line 580, and page vii. 

* See below, Bibl. I, 1760 w., 1767; H, 1759 w., 1760 w., 1767; and Poems (1767), 



RELIGIOUS POETRY: GILBANK — SWAIN 409 

while he had prepared his Familiar Explanation of Milton's works 
(1762),^ and, as if this were not enough, he later quoted five lines 
from the epic on the title-page of his Thoughts in Prison. Yet, as his 
poems seem to contain none of the usual references to Milton and no 
phrases borrowed from his works, it is doubtful if the flashy, fashion- 
able preacher was well acquainted with the writings of the stern 
Puritan, if his use of the style or the plan of Milton's poems meant 
anything more than that these were the models then in vogue. 

Dodd was but one of a host of eighteenth-century clergymen who 
were given to versifying. Many of them doubtless got their effusions 
into print, as the Rev. Charles Billinge did his Poems on Christian 
Charity, Contentment, and Melancholy (1784), "by the concurrence 
of a very respectable and numerous List of Subscribers" ^ who ad- 
mired the author and perhaps knew little about poetry. Billinge's 
work, though quite as dull and even more stiltedly Miltonic in style 
and diction than are the other pieces of its class, has at least the 
virtue of being short, whereas William Gilbank's Day of Pentecost 
(1789) contains twelve books. The title is a misnomer; for the piece 
is not particularly concerned with the gift of tongues, but aims to 
give a "comprehensive view of our religion, as it is supported by a 
long chain of extraordinary facts, and striking interpositions of Provi- 
dence, recorded in the sacred histories." The scenes in heaven are 
modelled after Milton, "whose style and manner," the reviewer ob- 
serves, "Mr. Gilbank not improperly, but feebly imitates, "and with- 
out concealing the imitation, since he "apologises in his preface for 
introducing some well-known lines from Milton and Shakspeare."^ 

The year that favored the world with Gilbank's lengthy lucubra- 
tions also gave it another work of the same kind, and, notwithstand- 
ing its seven editions, of the same negative excellence, — the Rev. 
Joseph Swain's Redemption. Its first book, "The Primitive State 
and Fall of Man," owes something to the contents of Paradise Lost, 
and the style and language of the entire work, though commonplace 
enough, are frequently as Miltonic as in these lines: 

Satan perhaps exulted. He might think 
God's ancient purpose frustrate; all the fruit 
Of his high counsel in creating man 
Abortive rendered, and this embryo world 
His own dominion, where to range at large.^ 

' See above, p. 25. ^ Preface, p. iv. 

' Crit. Rev., Ixvii. 351-4. I have not seen the poem. 

^ First American ed. (Boston, 181 2), p. 66. The poem originally consisted of five 
books, but in the second edition was extended to eight. The Monthly Renew thought 
poorly of it, giving Swain the dubious title, "a middling poet" (enl. ed., ii. 459-61). 



4IO THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

On a granite obelisk near Southampton are the words, "The grave 
of Robert Pollok, author of The Course of Time: His immortal Poem 
is his monument," ^ — an interesting contrast to that other inscrip- 
tion, carved about the same time, "Here lies one whose name was 
writ in water." No one reads the Course of Time to-day, nor is there 
any reason for reading it. It is a long work of three hundred pages, 
purporting to be an account of life on earth related in heaven to 
spirits from other worlds. There is a great deal of diffuse moralizing 
of an obvious kind, but little apparent system. Hell and heaven are 
described, and almost every aspect of earthly existence is reviewed 
from a narrowly religious standpoint; nature descriptions and illus- 
trative episodes are introduced; and the closing books picture the 
last ages of the world, its final destruction, and the day of judgment. 
An undertaking of this kind is t3^ical of the eighteenth century, and 
the appearance of such a work in 1827 shows how slowly the influ- 
ence of the romantic poets made itself felt. The poem is, indeed, a 
later Night Thoughts in the style and manner of The Task; for, aside 
from Milton, PoUok's literary enthusiasms were Young and Cowper, 
poets representative of the age that was past. If we miss the home- 
like charm and the incisive, vigorous expression which mark Cowper 
at his best, we are at least spared the hollow, declamatory pessi- 
mism of Young and the pompous involutions of eighteenth-century 
blank verse. The influence of the newer poetry was at work, but it 
had not gone far. The Course of Time is easy reading, and pleasant 
if one skips the moralizing and does not read too long. It is sincere, 

Another writer who "of Redemption made damned work" was William Williams, a 
young law-student, who planned to issue a book of his Redemption, with Notes, Doc- 
trinal, Moral, and Philosophical, every three months; but fortunately only the first 
book of his dull discourse, which is slightly Miltonic in style, seems to have got into 
print (see Mo. Rev., 1796, enl. ed., xxi. 226-7). I have not seen this poem, or the three 
which Mason Chamberlin published in 1800 and 1801 as Equanimity, Harvest, and 
Ocean, and of which the Monthly Review said (enl. ed., xxxiii. 429-30, xxxvi. 437-8, and 
of. Crit. Rev. , new arr. , xxxi. 112): "The first of these poems is in fact a sermon in blank 
verse, on the text In patience possess your souls; and the latter may be considered as a 
composition of the same description, on the subject of grateful piety and trust in God. . . . 
texts of scripture are very liberally interwoven, which often produce a prosaic effect. 
. . . We cannot compliment Mr. C. as manifesting the fervid glow of poetic sentiment," 
— which, to judge from the extracts given, is putting it mildly. The style shows some 
influence from Paradise Lost. George Townsend's Armageddon, in twelve books, eight 
of which were published in 1815, is called extravagant and absurd by the Eclectic Re- 
view (new series, iv, 392-5). God and Christ are characters and the style is 
patterned on Milton's. 

^ The inscription was of course none of his doing. Four editions of the Course of 
Time were sold within a year, and the seventy-eighth thousand was published in i868. 
A striking testimony to the high repute in which Pollok was held is the fifty-page essay, 
"Sacred Poetry, Milton and Pollok," which was published as late as 1861 in T. 
McNicoll's Essays on English Literature. 



RELIGIOUS POETRY: POLLOK — PHILLIPS 411 

comparatively natural in expression, and at times impressive, but it 
lacks vigor, is diffuse, and soon becomes monotonous. It has not 
proved "immortal," for it has no spark of the divine fire. Yet, 
when one learns that it was written by a high-minded youth of 
twenty-seven who died of overwork the year it was published, one 
hesitates to mention anything but the unusual talents that the poem 
certainly exhibits. 

Pollok's style, though similar to Cowper's, is much more Miltonic. 
It is, indeed, strangely so for a work that appeared the same year as 
Tennyson's first volume; but here again it belongs with the eighteenth 
century. Inversions occur in almost every line, adjectives are com- 
monly used for adverbs, and words that would be expressed in prose 
are frequently omitted. The diction, however, recalls Milton's only 
in the scenes in heaven, which are among Pollok's best and, as might 
be expected, are closely modelled on those in Paradise Lost, I shall 
quote not from any of these passages, but from a more characteristic 
one devoted to Byron: 

As some fierce comet of tremendous size, 

To which the stars did reverence as it passed, 

So he, through learning and through fancy, took 

His flight sublime, and on the loftiest top 

Of Fame's dread mountain sat ; not soiled and worn, 

As if he from the earth had laboured up; 

But as some bird of heavenly plumage fair, 

He looked, which down from higher regions came, 

And perched it there, to see what lay beneath. ' 

We who think of the first third of the nineteenth century as the 
period of Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats are likely to be 
disconcerted when we find what the people of the time actually read 
and wrote, when we learn that after these men were dead or had 
ceased composing, and even after two of Tennyson's volumes had 
appeared, verses quite as inflated and absurdly Miltonic in expres- 
sion as Philips's Cyder were still being composed. One of these 
works was indeed by a later Philhps, who, however, spelled his name 
with two /'s and was called William instead of John. His poem, 
Mount Sinai, which appeared in 1830 with a dedication accepted by 
the king, narrates in four books the giving of the ten commandments, 
the making of the golden calf, and the building of the ark of the 

' iv. 720-28. Pollok refers to Milton in vi. 68-72, ix. 500-511. His brother writes 
that Robert first read Paradise Lost when he was in his eighteenth year, and was im- 
mediately "captivated with it . . . from that time Milton became his favourite 
author and, . . . next to the Bible, his chief companion. Henceforward, he read more or 
less of him almost every day" {Life, by David Pollok, 1843, p. 19). 



412 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

covenant. In the preface he announces, ''I have adhered to the 
metrical economy of Milton, as preferable to that of numbers of 
more modern extraction." But "metrical economy" and "numbers" 
must have been elastic terms to Phillips, covering style and diction 
no less than prosody, as will appear from these lines, by no means 
the most inflated in the poem : 

In robes of living light, 

Before Jehovah, so effulgent he [Moses] 

That mortal sense had fancied him resolved 

As 'twere to featured empyrean fire. 

His glowing hands the Tables of the Law 

Tenacious held, and from his upward eye 

Flash'd pious ecstacy. Replete arose 

The fragrant sweets of calamus, and stacte ... 

Effused in ether. > 

Mount Sinai was not the last religious poem to employ the ex- 
cessive and objectionable Miltonisms that distinguish eighteenth- 
century blank verse. These are almost as marked in some of the 
numerous effusions of Robert Montgomery, the natural son of a 
professional clown and a schoolmistress, who shot like a comet across 
the heaven of popular favor. When but twenty-one Montgomery 
published a piece in heroic couplets. The Omnipresence of the Deity 
(1828), which ran through "eight editions in as many months" and 
by 1855 reached the twenty-eighth separate reprinting. Thereafter 
work followed work in rapid succession, until in the collected editions 
of 1840 and 1841 his complete poems filled six volumes. Many of 
these pieces are short and not a few of them are rimed; but several 
are long works in blank verse, Satan, or Intellect without God (1830, 
tenth edition 1842), The Messiah (1832, eighth edition 1842), Luther 
(1842, sixth edition 1852). Very likely the reader has never heard of 
any of these productions and would be unable to obtain them in 
either bookstores or libraries ; yet their author receives more space 
in Allibone's Dictionary of Authors than is allotted to Coleridge, 
and his Satan, we are told, "ran through more editions, and suddenly 
elicited more contemporary fame than the publication of any poet 
since the death of Byron." ^ 

In Macaulay's remorseless exposure of the emptiness of Mont- 
gomery's poems,^ their vogue is attributed to "the modern practice 

1 Pages 1 3 1-2. A year after the appearance of Phillips's narrative another unrimed 
poem with a similar title, Mount Sion, was published by John Newby Mosby {Fall of 
Algiers, Doncaster, 1831, pp. 359-418). This production, which fills sixty pages with a 
vision of the day of judgment, is a dull enough copy of the style and particularly the 
diction of Paradise Lost, though less absurdly Miltonic than its predecessor. 

'^ Diet. Nat. Biog. ^ Edin. Rev., \i.ig^-2io. 



RELIGIOUS POETRY: MONTGOMERY 413 

of puffing," but it was probably due quite as much to the fluency of 
their grandiloquent expression of sentimental religious platitudes. 
For, with the exception of The Messiah, which recounts the life of 
Christ, nearly all of Montgomery's effusions are really sermons, with 
considerably more of nature but no less of rambling verbosity than 
such productions often manifest. Much of Macaulay's character- 
ization of Satan is applicable to the other poems, — ''a long soliloquy 
. . . concerning geography, politics, newspapers, fashionable society, 
theatrical amusements. Sir Walter Scott's novels. Lord Byron's 
poetry, and Mr. Martin's pictures," which "always returns" to the 
*' preaching tone." ^ 

Some of Montgomery's blank verse is colorless and conversational; 
but as a rule, since he was quite without originality, he naturally 
copied the unrimed religious poetry of the preceding hundred and 
fifty years, stiffening his style freely with inversions, adjectives used 
for adverbs, and other Miltonisms, though, unlike most imitators of 
Paradise Lost, borrowing no words or phrases from it. Lines like 
these are typical : 

Inaudibly, along a darken'd stage 

Of wonders, moves the lone Almighty now, 

Himself evolving what His love decrees 

Inscrutable, by boasting man unshared. 

And e'en like Philip to Azotus rapt, 

Sightless, or lost, shall Luther for a while 

Appear; and safe in castled shade retire.^ 

So unblushing an imitation might have been expected a hundred 
years earUer, but to find such lines not only written but widely ad- 
mired in Tennyson's day is surprising. Still more curious is it that 
a popular religious poet should copy and even try to look like that 
antichrist of his time. Lord Byron! Doubtless it was the desire to be 
grand and impressive that led him to choose such models ; but, what- 
ever the cause, there can be little question of the influence of Man- 
fred on the opening lines of Satan, which represent Montgomery at 
his best: 

Awake, ye thunders! — and with gloomy roar 
Deepen around me, while a darkness shrouds 
The air, as once again this World I greet 
Here on the haughty mountain, where of old 
The God Incarnate, in the heavens re-throned, 
Was tempted and withstood me. Lo! the powers 

1 lb. 209-10. The work receives its title from Satan, who utters the soliloquy; but, 
as Macaulay suggests {ih. 210), if "about a hundred lines in different parts of this large 
volume" were omitted or altered, it might be republished " under the name of Gabriel." 

^ Luther, section on "Moral Results," Poetical Works (1854), 217-18. 



414 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Of Nature, by my dread command sublimed, 
Mount into rage, and magnify the storm 
To elemental grandeur; while as Prince 
By whom the spirit-peopled air is bound 
In bondage, from my viewless throne I gaze, 
Prompting the Tempest. 

Montgomery's blaze of popularity was the most brilliant, if not 
the last,^ flare from the feeble torch held up for the guidance of be- 
nighted mankind in unrimed rehgious verse. ^ The extinction of the 
beacon, or of what essayed to be one, attracted no attention, and 
even had it been observed would have called forth only rejoicings 
from most readers. For, we are assured, ''the extreme difficulty of 
exhibiting religious subjects in a poetical dress" had "long been seen 
and confessed." ^ The critics certainly confessed their feelings 
frankly enough. "We do not object to the piety, but poetry of the 
author," they said of one "sacred poem"; ^ and against another they 
turned Pope's lines, 

To laugh, were want of goodness and of grace; 
But to be grave, exceeds all power of face.* 

And they were right. The religious poetry written in blank verse 
during the eighteenth and the first part of the nineteenth centuries 
consisted almost entirely of the tedious moralizings of uninspired 
clergymen who had either no message to deliver or no ability to 
deliver it in verse. 

It is easy to throw the blame on the low state of religion or of 
poetry in the eighteenth century, and unquestionably both were re- 
sponsible. Yet it was during this century that the great Wesleyan 
revival shook England, and surely Cowper, Smart, PoUok, and 
Grahame were genuinely religious men. During what period, indeed, 
except Milton's own, has religion been "married to immortal verse," 
and particularly to verse of considerable length? The truth is that 
the religious muse, though often invoked, has seldom responded, and 

' So late as 1866 E. H. Bickersteth, Bishop of Exeter, frankly used both the sub- 
stance and the style of Paradise Lost in the twelve books of his Yesterday, To-day, 
and For Ever. 

^ In the United States, where literary and other styles began and ended later, poems 
of this kind appeared occasionally throughout the nineteenth century. A few that I 
have chanced upon (all published in New York) are Abaddon, the Spirit of Destruction, 
by Sumner L. Fairfield, 1830; Anastasis, and The Temptation of the Wilderness, by 
Thomas Curtis, 1850; Christ in Hades, by W. W. Lord, 1851; Satan Chain'd, by 
Nathaniel Dunn, 1875. 

^ Afo. jf?eii.,enl.ed.,xxi. 226 (1796). 

* Crit. Rev. , Ixvii. 352(1 789) . 

' Mo. Rev., xliv. 90 (1771); Epistle to Arbuthnot, 35-6. 



RELIGIOUS POETRY 415 

then usually for "short swallow flights of song." In the eighteenth 
century she was not so often summoned for long unrimed works as 
would be expected from the vogue of Milton, Mrs. Rowe, and Young, 
and from the large number of versifying clergymen. Even counting 
the Night Thoughts, The Task, and the religious epics, I find only 
forty or fifty pieces of the kind issued in the first two hundred years 
after the publication of Paradise Lost. 

The failure of the greater part of these can be attributed only in 
part to the use of blank verse, for their authors' rimed pieces are no 
better.^ In many cases, to be sure, rime may have been discarded in 
order to save trouble, — a boomerang policy, since blank verse, 
though one of the easiest mediums to use, is perhaps the hardest to 
use effectively; and during the eighteenth century, when so few of its 
difficulties had been mastered, the freedom it offered was, like that 
of the irregular Pindaric, fatal to mediocrity. There was in the meter 
of Paradise Lost the additional disadvantage that, when mediocre 
bards adopted it, they also adopted many if not most of the pecu- 
liarities of style and diction that went with it, and these involved 
Miltonisms made their work seem forced and artificial, rather than 
the simple, direct expression of deep conviction. 

* A notable exception is Smart's Song to David, which is a religious lyric. 



PART III 
THE SHORTER POEMS 



CHAPTER XVII 

LATE VOGUE OF THE SHORTER POEMS 

The Augustans Were essentially non-lyric. Their lack of imagina- 
tion, the emphasis they laid upon reason, propriety, and form, and 
their avoidance, in verse, of any expression of ecstasy or tender per- 
sonal feeling, all these were fatal to song. For over a century, in 
consequence, the lyric impulse was dead in England. Lyrics there 
were, to be sure, and some good ones, but hardly so many as a single 
year produced in the spacious times of Ehzabeth and James. Even 
the beauty of the Restoration songs is the beauty of decay; and 
years before Pope began to lisp in numbers the impulse to sing and 
the power of song were practically gone, not to reappear until the 
eve of the nineteenth century.^ 

It must not be thought that the disappearance of song was due 
merely to a mistaken theory of what poetry is; the causes were 
deeper than that. The qualities that lie at the heart of the lyric — 
spontaneity, intensity, subjectivity — were gone from verse and 
with them had departed the singing voice. Interest in lyric poetry 
had Ukewise ceased, for the Augustans were apparently as little in- 
clined to listen to outpourings from the hearts of others as to pour 
themselves out in song. Most lyrics probably seemed to them a bit 
silly, bordering on bad taste, or lacking in reserve, if not, like 
Shakespeare's sonnets, actually dull. Real ecstasy they disliked, 
hence the failure of Smart's superb Song to David to find an audience; 
fine poetic feeling and delicacy of fancy were beyond most of them, 
hence Collins's Odes did not sell and so late as 1789 Blake's Songs of 
Innocence fell on deaf ears; hence, too, what is more to our purpose, 
for many years Milton's minor poems found almost no admirers. 

If Lycidas is, as Tennyson once asserted, "a touchstone of poetic 
taste, "^ there must have been little sensitiveness to the finer qualities 

1 If conservative dates are desired, 1687 (the death of Waller, the completion of 
Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding, and the publication of Newton's 
Principia) or 1688 (the Revolution and the birth of Pope), and 1786 (the Kilmarnock 
Burns) or 1783 (Blake's Poetical Sketches) may be taken; but the period could with 
safety be extended ten years at each end, particularly at the latter, since Burns's songs 
were in no respect the product of the English literature of his time and Blake's found no 
readers. 

2 See a letter from Edward Fitzgerald to Fanny Kemble, March 26, 1880. The same 
idea had been expressed by Thomas Warton in his edition of Milton's minor poems 
(1785, p. 34), and by Miss Seward (Letters, 1811, i. 191). 



420 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

in verse throughout the century following the Restoration; for Mil- 
ton's monody, though published in 1638 and reissued along with his 
other short poems in 1645, was rarely mentioned before 1740. Nor 
were any of its companions generally appreciated until they had been 
at least a hundred years in print. This neglect is the more surpris- 
ing because by 1 740 the pieces had appeared in at least ten editions 
of Milton's complete poems/ and had been published by themselves 
twice in English (1645, 1673) and once in French (1730). Moreover, 
Paradise Regained, Samson, Lycidas, and Comus had been turned 
into Latin by William Hog (1690-98), and Allegro, Penseroso, and 
Lycidas had been included in two editions of Dryden's popular Mis- 
cellany (1716, 1727). Much has been made, too much, of the failure 
of Paradise Lost to win immediate recognition; yet little surprise has 
been expressed that the minor poems, though published twenty-two 
years before the epic, attracted slight attention for as many years 
after it had achieved popularity.- In the numerous early references 
to Milton it is almost always Paradise Lost that is mentioned,^ and 
even such writers as allude to the shorter pieces usually seem not to 
expect their readers to be familiar with them. 

It is not strange, therefore, that in the period of approximately a 
century between their publication and 1742 the total number of 
pieces thus far discovered which show any influence from the various 
minor poems,^ except in borrowed phrases, is only forty-two, and 
that of these only two, Parnell's Hymn on Contentment and Dyer's 
Grongar Hill, were generally known or of much importance. Yet 
there was no prejudice like that against blank verse to stand in the 
way of these lyrics, nor would their general character lead one to 
expect such neglect; for they are not mysterious or dithyrambic, but 
deal with universal feehngs and have the restraint, the impersonality, 
the quiet, and the careful workmanship which are the delight of the 
true classicist. One can see that the Augustans might not have cared 
for the ecstatic Song to David or the strange, childlike Songs of Inno- 
cence; but their indifference to Allegro, Penseroso, Comus, and Ly- 

1 It is impossible without examining each edition (which I have been unable to do) 
to say just how many were published. The " Poetical Works" usually appeared in two 
volumes, which were sold separately; and, as there was more demand for the first vol- 
ume, Paradise Lost, a single issue of the remaining poems seems often to have sufficed 
for two or more editions of the " Works." I can find evidence for only nine printings of 
the complete minor poems before 1740. 

^ That is, after the publication of the Spectator papers in 1712. 

^ See pp. 8-9 above. 

* E.xcept the poem To Aristus, the sonnet in the London Magazine for July, 1738, 
and that by Philip Yorke, which were influenced by Milton's sonnets (see below, pp. 
489-90). 



LATE VOGUE OF THE SHORTER POEMS 42 1 

cidas gives rise to the suspicion that most of them were deaf to the 
subtler harmonies of poetry. No doubt there were many readers 
whose attention had never been called to the lyrics, but, as thou- 
sands of copies were sold, a large number of persons must at one 
time or another at least have glanced them over. In the first half of 
the eighteenth century there were probably many who agreed with 
what Johnson said of Lycidas: '* The diction is harsh, the rhymes un- 
certain, and the numbers unpleasing. What beauty there is we must 
therefore seek in the sentiments and images. ... In this poem there is 
no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is nothing 
new. Its form is that of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, and therefore dis- 
gusting." ^ In 1783 an admirer of the poem acknowledged its "in- 
correctness" and doubted if it ''should be considered as a model of 
composition. "2 Even the open-minded Dryden seems not to have 
cared for Milton's minor poems. "Rhyme was not his talent," he 
declares; "he had neither the ease of doing it, nor the graces of it; 
which is manifest in his Juvenilia, or verses written in his youth, 
where his rh5ane is always constrained and forced, and comes hardly 
from him." ' 

In this matter Pope had broader sympathies than his predecessor, 
for he praised the " JuveniHa," lent them to a friend, and even in his 
earUest pubhcations used many phrases from them.* His opponent, 
Lewis Theobald, the original hero of The Dunciad, explained that 
"the general Beauties of those two Poems of Milton, intitled, 
U Allegro and // Penseroso, are obvious to all Readers, because the 
Descriptions are the most poetical in the World." ^ The poet laureate 
Nahum Tate, who was also pilloried in The Dunciad, seems to have 
taken a phrase from Allegro and the suggestion for an entire poem 

1 "Milton," in Lives (ed. Hill), i. 163. This was no chance utterance; he told Miss 
Seward "he would hang a dog that read the Lycidas twice" (see her Letters, i. 66). 

^ John Scott, Critical Essays (1785), 63-4. Scott says, however (p. 38), that John- 
son in his account of Lycidas 'widely dissented from the vox popiili.' As late as 1804 
John Aikin, a critic of good standing, wrote that it was " a poem of a peculiar cast, con- 
cerning which you will probably find it difficult to fix your judgment. . . . The construc- 
tions are . . . occasionally harsh, and the language obscure . . . yet there are passages in 
which I think you cannot fail to recognise the master-hand of a true poet" {Letters on 
English Poetry, 2d ed., 1807, pp. 125-6). 

^ Essay on Satire {Works, Scott-Saintsbury ed., xiii. 20). Dryden may, to be sure, 
have liked the poems apart from their rimes. 

* See above, p. 115; and below, Appendix A. 

^ Preface to his edition of Shakespeare (1733), pp. xix-xx. Pointed out by George 
Sherburn in his Early Popularity of Milton's Minor Poems {Modern Philology, xvii. 
259-78, 515-40). I am indebted to Mr. Sherburn's articles (which appeared after this 
chapter was finished) for some ten or fifteen references that are acknowledged in my 
notes. 



422 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

from the little-known Nativity ode.^ Nor was Addison's devotion re- 
stricted to the epic. Allan Ramsay's correspondent, who thought 
Milton's masque *'the best ever written ... in the Praise of which no 
Words can be too many," remembered to have heard "the late ex- 
cellent Mr. Addison" agree with him in that opinion. ^ To Allegro 
Addison gave the tribute of imitation, for his Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, 
which was sung at Oxford in 1699, has the lines, 

Next let the solemn organ join 
Religious airs and strains divine, 
Such as may lift us to the skies, 
And set all heaven before our eyes.^ 

Later he wrote in the Spectator: "Milton, in a joyous assembly of 
imaginary persons, has given us a very poetical figure of laughter. 
His whole band of mirth is so finely described, that I shall set down 
the passage at length." ^ The way in which Allegro is here referred 
to seems to indicate that the poem was not well known, an inference 
certainly warranted by another passage in the same periodical. " In 
this sweet retirement," writes the unknown contributor, " I naturally 
fell into the repetition of some lines out of a poem of Milton's, which 
he entitles II Penseroso, the ideas of which were exquisitely suited 
to my present wanderings of thought." ^ A similar conclusion in 
regard to Comus may be drawn from Steele's remark about "a pas- 
sage in a mask writ by Miltoti, where two brothers are introduced 
seeking after their sister, whom they had lost in a dark night and 
thick wood"; ® and from Francis Peck's reference, ten years later, to 
"the immortal Milton ['s] . . . Circe, a beautiful Piece of Doric or 
Pastoral Poetry, most of it written in Blank Verse, wrought into a 
Mask, and presented at Ludlow Castle . . . [which] is printed in the 
Second Volume of his Poetical Works." ^ In much the same way 
John Hughes, who praised and copied the companion pieces, referred 
in 1 71 5 to the "Poem call'd // Penseroso" and "a Mask, by our 
famous Milton; the whole Plan of which is Allegorical, and is written 
with a very Poetical Spirit." ^ So, too, Zachary Pearce alluded to an 
expression "us'd by M. in his Poem call'd V Allegro." ^ These re- 

* The phrase "Wood-wild Notes," in his poem prefixed to Gildon's History of the 
Athenian Society (1693?), may be, as Mr. Sherburn points out (p. 522), from Allegro, 
134. For the debt to the Nativity, see pp. 566-7 below. 

2 See note to Ramsay's Nuptials {Poems, 1728, ii. 143). 

^ PFof^5 (Bohned.),vi. 534. ^ No. 425. 

* No. 249. * Tatler, no. 98. 
^ Sighs upon the Death of Queen Anne (1719), p. xiv. 

* In his edition of Spenser (1715), vol. i, pp. xxxvii, xxxix. Cf. pp. 442-3 below. 

* Review of the Text of P. L. (1733), 93. In support of the received text of the epic, 
Pearce quotes Milton's usage in his other works, referring to Lycidas once, to the octo- 



LATE VOGUE OF THE SHORTER POEMS 423 

marks, and the fact that Thomas Parnell, who died in 17 18, named 
a character in one of his songs Comus and twice imitated Allegro,^ 
indicate that the leading classicists knew the 1645 volume but the 
people in general did not. 

Yet the early pieces were not entirely without admirers among less 
cultivated readers. In 1691, for example, the Athenian Mercury de- 
clared the "Poems ... on Mirth and Melancholly, an Elegy on his 
Friend that was drown 'd, and especially a Fragment of the Passion 
[!]" to be "incomparable"; ^ and so early as 1657, in Joshua Poole's 
English Parnassus, "nearly the whole of the Ode on the Nativity is 
inserted in different extracts; the quotations from L'Allegro are 
copious; and lines are given from Lycidas and other pieces." ^ These 
infrequent instances of justice to the poems,^ however, only accen- 
tuate the general indifference and render it harder to understand. 
Other books of extracts, like Cotgrave's English Treasury of Wit and 
Language (1655) and Bysshe's Art of English Poetry (1702), contain 
nothing from Milton's early writings, although the latter quotes ex- 
tensively from Paradise Lost. It was not till 1 733 that commentators 
used the "Juvenilia" to throw light upon the epic; before 1730 very 
few of the many enthusiastic admirers and imitators of that work 
give evidence of knowing anything whatever about Allegro, Pense- 
roso, Comus, or Lycidas. John Phihps, for instance, never borrows 
from these pieces,^ and Dennis and Watts do so but once.^ 

The early biographers of Milton of course mention his shorter 
poems; but they usually give more attention to Comus and Lycidas, 
because these pieces, having been published separately, require 

S3-lIabics twice, to the sonnets three and to Comus four times; but there is no evidence 
that he admired the poems, and reference to them in a scholarly work of this kind is no 
indication that they were popular. 

' See his second Anacreontick ("Gay Bacchus "); and p. 444 below. 

2 Vol. V, no. 14. No reference is made to Comus. 

3 William Godwin, Lives of Edward atid John Philips (1815), 286. I do not doubt 
that the statement is substantially true, for I have found quotations on pages 265, 400- 
401, 477, 483, 519, 553, 554 {Nativity); 432, 445, 449, 450, 491, 556 (Allegro); 430 (May 
Morning); 351, 444, 445, 577 (Lycidas). 

* Some others for the period 1735-40 are given on pp. 425-6, 432, below. 

» Philips has the phrase, "Bacchus, author of heart-cheering mirth" (Cyder, ii. 366), 
which may possibly have been suggested by Allegro, 13-16. 

^ In Blenheim, Dennis has "swinging slow with hoarse and sullen Roar" (Select 
Works, 1718, i. 160; cf. Penseroso, 76). The line "Silence was ravish'd as she sung," 
which occurs in section ii of his Court of Death (1695), he probably took from Paradise 
Lost, iv. 604, not from Comus, 557-60. In a letter written about 1705 defending the 
stage (Original Letters, 1721, i. 236, noted by Sherburn, p. 273), Dennis refers to Milton's 
Samson, to his "fine Encomium on Shakespear," as well as to his " e.xtraordinary Esteem 
for Johnson" (in Allegro, 131-2?); but singularly enough he makes no mention of 
Comus. For Watts, see p. 425 below. 



424 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

separate notice in a chronological survey, and because in accounts 
devoted principally to facts the occasions that called forth these 
two works would naturally be mentioned. Even so late as 1753, 
however, many of the biographies which laud Paradise Lost to the 
skies either have no praise at all for the earHer poems or simply re- 
peat some earHer, undiscriminating comment. Usually they give the 
1645 volume a brief, blanket commendation, so vague as to make no 
impression on the reader and not even to convince him that the 
writer knew the pieces he praised. To be sure, Edward Phillips men- 
tions "that most excellent Monody . . . Intituled Lycidas," and 
adds, "Never was the loss of Friend so Elegantly lamented"; ^ but 
Milton's nephew and pupil could hardly have said less.^ Toland in 
1698 refers to only two of the poems, but he exhibits a real apprecia- 
tion for them. Of Comus he writes, "Like which Piece in the peculiar 
disposition of the Story, the sweetness of the Numbers, the justness 
of the Expression, and the Moral it teaches, there is nothing extant 
in any Language " ; and "the Monody wherin he bewails his Learned 
Friend Mr. King drown'd in the Irish Seas" he characterizes as "one 
of the finest he ever wrote." ^ Fenton speaks, in 1725, not only of 
these two works but of the octosyllabics as well; yet his praise is too 
vague to mean much.^ Nine years later Richardson, in addition to 
general commendation, declares Allegro and Penseroso to be "Ex- 
quisite Pictures," Comus and Lycidas "perhaps Superior to all in 
their Several Kinds," and, after quoting Toland's opinion of the 
masque, remarks, "As great an Encomium have I heard of Lycidas 
as a Pastoral, and That when Theocritus was not forgot." ^ But 
Richardson, as his readers all knew, was addicted to superlatives. 
Peck, in 1740, analyzes the principal short poems (including the 

1 Milton's Letters of State (1694), p. ix. "Among the rest of his Juvenile Poems," 
Phillips goes on to say, "some he wrote at the Age of 15, which contain a Poetical 
Genius scarce to be parallel'd by any English Writer." 

2 Similarly, the few borrowings from these early pieces that Grosart points out in his 
notes to the poems of Andrew Marvell (who died in 1678) prove nothing, since they are 
rather less than might be expected from a man who was Milton's friend and assistant. 
Two are dubious, "gadding vines" {Upon Appleton House, 610, cf. Lycidas, 40) and 
" the last distemper of the sober brain " (Fleckno, 28, cf. Lycidas, 71); but this one (from 
the First Anniversary under the Protector, 151-2, cf. Nativity, 172) is striking: 

And still the dragon's tail 
Swinges the volumes of its horrid flail. 

' Pages 16, 44, of the life prefixed to the 1698 edition of Milton's prose works. 

* All he says is that the four pieces are "of such an exquisite strain! that though He 
had left no other monuments of his Genius behind him, his name had been immortal" 
(pp. xix-xx of his edition of P. L.). Fenton seems not to have cared for Lycidas; at 
least, he makes no mention of it in his Florelio, "a Pastoral lamenting the Death of the 
Marquis of Blandford" (Feb., 1702/3), in which he does refer to Spenser's AsiropheL 

* Explanatory Notes on P. L. (1734), pp. xv-xvi. 



LATE VOGUE OF THE SHORTER POEMS 425 

Nativity) , gives their sources and the occasions for which they were 
composed, and comments on sundry passages, but except in his dis- 
cussion of the rimes of Lycidas says nothing to indicate appreciation. 
Giles Jacob in 1720, Birch in 1738, Newton in 1749, and Theophilus 
Gibber in 1753 give only the facts regarding the poems and repeat 
briefly the comments of others.^ On the whole, therefore, the attitude 
of Milton's biographers, from whom undue partiality for all his 
works might be expected, reflects the general indifference to his 
shorter pieces. 

Yet as regards one of the poems these writers exhibit an appre- 
ciation which seems not to have been common, for the passages that 
have been quoted contain a goodly part of the few allusions to 
Lycidas made in the Augustan age. Joseph Trapp says nothing about 
the poem in his Praelectiones Poeticae (171 1-22), though he has 
warm praise for Paradise Lost, discusses both the elegiac and the 
pastoral form, and alludes to the Shepherd's Calendar. Walsh wrote 
to Pope in 1706, "I am sure there is nothing of this kind [the pastoral] 
in Enghsh worth mentioning." - In the course of examining hun- 
dreds of books of the period in which one would expect Milton's elegy 
to be referred to, I have found, up to 1756, only thirteen such refer- 
ences besides those mentioned above and but seven pieces that were 
at all influenced by it.^ Yet in Lycidas, as Mark Pattison tells us, 
"we have reached the high-water mark of English poesy"! 

After 1698 I find no mention of the monody — except Fenton's 
general commendation of the minor poems, a quotation in one of 
Pope's letters and one in a poem by William Hinchliffe,"* a borrowing 
by Isaac Watts,^ and the expression "Lycidas, the Friend," in Thom- 
son's Winter^ — until 1727, when Moses Browne, the editor of 

^ Birch compared the Cambridge manuscripts with the printed versions of Comus, 
Lycidas, and some of the sonnets, and devoted several pages to variant readings; but 
it seems to have been scholarly thoroughness rather than admiration of the poems that 
led him to do this. He may have had a special interest in Comus because of the recent 
presentation of Dalton's version of the masque, to which he refers. 

- Pope's Works (Elwin-Courthope ed.), vi. 50-51. 

^ See Bibl. Ill a, below. The extracts in Poole's English Parnassus (see above, p. 
423, n. 3), and Pope's verbal borrowings (below, Appendix A), should not, however, 
be forgotten. 

* "For fame, though it be, as Milton finely calls it, the last infirmity of noble minds" 
(Pope to Trumbull, March 12, 1713), and "Flames in the Forehead of the Eastern Sky" 
(Hinchlifife, To Sylvia); cf. Lycidas, 71, 171. 

^ In his Funeral Poem on Thomas Gunston {Horae Lyricae, 1709, p. 330): 
So shines thy gunston's Soul above the Spheres 
Raphael replies, and wipes away my Tears. 
Cf. Lycidas, 168, 77, 181; note also Watts's three preceding lines, and the general 
similarity in idea between the last parts of the two poems. 

^ First ed. (1726), 298. The name Lycidas is not, so far as I know, particularly 



426 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Walton, spoke of it as a neglected work and used it as the model for 
one of his eclogues.^ This piece the Gentleman's Magazine reprinted 
in May and June, 1740, with the comment, "The following Poem . . . 
is reckon'd the best Imitation of Milton's Lycidas that has yet 
appear'd." Since there seem to have been no other poems in print 
at the time that would normally be termed imitations of Lycidas, it 
may be that the writer in the magazine had in mind not whole pieces, 
but passages like this in William Broome's verses on the death of 
Elijah Fenton : 

Where were ye, Muses, by what Fountain side, 
What River sporting when your Fav'rite dy'd? . . . 
Unlike those Bards, who uninform'd to play, 
Grate on their jarring Pipes a flashy Lay.^ 

In 1 73 1 Elizabeth Rowe spoke of "reading Milton's elegy on Ly- 
cidas'';^ three years later Warburton answered some questions of 
Theobald's regarding a passage in it,* and John Jortin quoted four 
of its lines ; ^ the following year William Buncombe printed seven 
lines of it in a life of John Hughes ; ^ while two more lines appear in 
an essay on prosody written about the same time by that great ad- 
mirer of Paradise Lost, Samuel Say, who refers to Lycidas as "a 

associated with friendship outside of Milton. In the second line of the Morning in the 
Country, which he wrote about 1720, Thomson borrowed from Allegro the phrase "in 
thousand liveries drest." 

^ "It has a long Time been IMatter of wonder to me," he wrote {Piscatory Eclogues, 
1729, p. 31)," that among so many Admirers and Imitators of that great Man, none have 
taken Notice of this Poem, so perfectly Original, which I can never read, for my own 
part, without the same Veneration, and Partiality, which is paid to the most accom- 
plish'd Works of Antiquity." Browne believed it was Phineas Fletcher's death that 
called forth Lycidas, a mistake which he corrected in his second edition. The rivers 
passage in his "Strife" eclogue is, as Mr. Sherburn points out (p. 537), clearly based 
upon that in Milton's Vacation Exercise, 91-100 (to which Browne refers in his note); 
the phrases "Trent to clasp her stretch'd out all his Arms" and "sedgy Lea" {Eclogues, 
96, 97) are from the same poem, and perhaps the river that "drew along his humid 
Train" is from Paradise Lost, vii. 306; one of the characters in the piece is named 
Comus. Towards the end of the " Sea Swains" eclogue Browne introduces the "admit 
him to their train" of Allegro, 38, the "oozy locks" and "level brine" of Lycidas, 175, 
98, and the "birds of calm" of the Nativity, 68. Near the beginning of "The Nocturnal" 
he has the "hedgerow elms" of Allegro, 58, and towards the end he compresses Allegro, 
63-6, into two lines (noted by Sherburn, p. 521), which in the third edition he encloses 
in quotation-marks. 

- Poems on Several Occasions (2d ed., 1750), 210-11. This poem (noted by Sherburn, 
P- 535) was written in 1730. The four lines are close together in a work of some length. 
For a piece in the same volume influenced by Penseroso, see pp. 445-6 below. 

^ Letters Moral and Entertaining, II. viii {Works, 1796, i. 240; Sherburn, p. 275). 

* Nichols, Illustrations, ii. 634, 648 (Sherburn, p. 276). 

^ "Samson Agonistes," in Remarks on.Spenser's Poems (1734), 185-6. 

* Hughes, Poems (1735), vol. i, p. iii. Buncombe introduces the quotation with the 
remark, "So just is the Reflexion of Milton in his Lycidas." 



LATE VOGUE OF THE SHORTER POEMS 427 

Pastoral Ode so remarkable for the Variety and Power of Numbers, 
as well as for every other Beauty." ^ By 1755, moreover, Milton is 
invoked as the author, not only of the epic and the octosyllabics, but 
of the monody; ^ and in the following year the London Magazine pub- 
lished a letter devoted entirely to the piece, which was termed "one 
of the most poetical and moving elegies that ever was wrote," the 
passage that begins "Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past," being 
praised in particular as "extremely striking and beautiful, superior 
to anything of the kind I ever read." ^ Yet this same year another 
periodical said, "As to the structure of the verse, and the irregular 
succession of the rhimes, we must confess, they do not greatly delight 
us; but some, perhaps, will see grace and beauty in that wildness and 
disorder, which to others may afford only perplexity and disgust." * 
Johnson's strictures appeared in 1779, and as late as 1793 the poem 
was characterized as "a stiff unnatural performance." ^ It was not 
until 1785, one hundred and forty-seven years after its publication, 
that anything like John Scott's twenty-eight-page critique of it ap- 
peared.^ Was a great poem ever so long in coming to its own! 

The earliest appreciation of Lycidas of which we have any record 
has been omitted from the foregoing account because it contained a 
still warmer tribute to the other minor poems. This work is the 
curious jumble known as the Cyprian Academy, which came from the 
pen of Robert Baron two years after the appearance of the 1645 
volume. Though "imitation is the sincerest flattery," plagiarism 
may be regarded as the most complete, and from this point of view 
Baron's work is "the perfect tribute." There are many lines as close 
to Milton as 

Flame in the forehead of the azure skie,^ 

and many passages much longer than the following and quite as 
untainted by originality, — 

* Poems and Two Critical Essays (1745), 118. This comment, Uke Buncombe's 
(p. 426, n. 6, above), sounds as if it were uncertain that readers would be familiar with 
the poem. Say also quotes from Comus {ib. 127). 

2 H. Kiddell, Genius of Milton (see Gent. Mag., xxv. 518; noted by Good, p. 81). 

^ xxv. 235-6. * Mo. Rev., xiv. 352. 

^ Bee, Aug. 21, 1793. Two years earlier (May 11, 1791) a writer in the same journal 
said that Adam Smith praised the octosyllabics but thought "all the rest of Milton's 
short poems were trash." 

^ See above, p. 251, n. 5. 

' ii. 28; cf. Lycidas, 171. Baron's plagiarisms, as well as a number of the other 
matters mentioned in this chapter, were pointed out by that great Miltonian, Thomas 
Warton, in his edition of Milton's minor poems (2d ed., 1791, pp. 403-7), where many 
illustrations are given. Warton {ib. p.v) also discovered among Archbishop Sancroft's 
papers in the Bodleian a transcript of the Nativity made about 1648, and one of Milton's 
paraphrase of the fifty-third Psalm. 



428 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Sol has quencht his glowing beame 
In the coole Atlantick streame, 
Now their shines no tell-tale sun 
Hymens rites are to be done, 
Now Loves revells 'gin to keepe. 
What have you to doe with sleepe? 
You have sweeter sweets to prove, 
Lovely Venus wakes, and love, 
Goddesse of Nocturnall sport 
Alwaies keep thy jocond court. ^ 

As Baron borrowed from most of Milton's early pieces, it is not sur- 
prising that he took a phrase from one of the sonnets.^ He seems to 
have been one of the few, however, who read those "soul-animating 
strains" before 1738. Philip Ayres, to be sure, mentioned them in 
1687 as unsuccessful; ^ Phillips appended four of them to his life of 
the poet and Toland quoted six in his, but in each case it was merely 
for biographical purposes; Zachary Pearce referred to three; * John 
Hughes borrowed from one,^ Pope from three,*^ his assistant Elijah 
Fenton quoted one,' and phrases and ideas taken from three make 
up the lines To Aristus, in Imitation of a Sotmet of Milton.^ But the 
general attitude was probably that of John Hughes, an admirer and 
imitator of the octosyllabics, who, after discussing Spenser's sonnets, 
adds baldly enough, ^'Milton has writ some, both in Italian and 
English." « 

The references given in this chapter to the various minor poems 
cannot, of course, pretend to include every mention of the pieces in 
the furst hundred years after their collective pubhcation. Yet they 
represent more than the findings of one man : they include not only 
everything I have discovered, but everything that seems to me sig- 
nificant in what a century and a half of English and American 
scholarship has pointed out. Accordingly, though other references to 
these poems will undoubtedly come to light, it is not likely that they 

1 i. 59; cf. Comiis, 95-7, 141, 122-8. In the first line the original reads "have" in- 
stead of "has," probably a misprint. 

^ Not, however, for the Cyprian Academy, but for the Pocula Castalia (1650, p. 27). 
Todd called attention to this borrowing in his note to Milton's sonnet, "How soon hath 
Time"; cf. also his appendix on Baron's imitations, at the end of his last volume 
(1801 ed.). On page A2 verso of the Pocula a number of lines from Milton's poem on 
Shakespeare are introduced. 

' See below, p. 488, n. 7. ^ See below, p. 443, n. 4. 

* See above, p. 422, n. 9. ® See Appendix A, below. 

' Fenton, in speaking of Waller's lines on Lawes, quotes the sonnet to Lawes. See 
"Observations" appended to his edition of Waller's Works, 1730, p. c (noted by Sher- 
burn,p. 275). * See below, p. 489. 

* In his edition of Spenser (1715), vol. i, p. ex. On the widespread indifference to 
sonnets in the eighteenth century, see pp. 480-82, 488 n. 7, 521-3, below. 



LATE VOGUE OF THE SHORTER POEMS 429 

will be numerous or enthusiastic enough to change the conclusions 
based upon the testimony we have now. Verbal parallels will con- 
tinue to be adduced, as they have been hitherto; but, unless there is 
other evidence that an author probably knew Milton's early work, 
such parallels are usually worthless.^ Phrases from the 1645 volume 
are most frequent and striking in Pope and Thomson, who made use 
of them in their earliest pieces and (except in Pope's Homer) bor- 
rowed from them about as often as from the epic.^ One important 
source of information as to the popularity of the poems — the num- 
ber of pieces influenced by them — will be examined in detail a little 
later. The conclusions to be drawn from such an examination will, 

' This is why little weight can be attached to the only parallel which seems to me 
significant that Alexander Harrach gives in his attempt to prove the anonymous Sylvan 
Dream (1701) to be the work of John Philips: 

Hear me, Sweet Echo, hear, and bless 
One that like thy Narcissus is 
{John Philips, 1906, p. 100; cf. Comus, 230, 237). Nor does the phrase "sooth'd with 
soft Lydian Airs," in Samuel Wesley's Hymn on Peace to the Prince of Peace (1713, p. 8), 
prove that Wesley (who certainly was familiar with Paradise Lost, see pp. 38, 45 n. i, 
109 n. I, above) knew Allegro, 136, any more than the line, "Thro' the long levell'd 
Tube, our stretching Sight," makes it certain that the author of ^n Epistle from a 
Gentleman to his Friend in the Country {Bee, 1733, i- 543) knew Comus, 340. Yet there 
can hardly be any question as to the source of the "wanton Wile, And Nod, and secret 
Beck, and amorous Leer" which N. Brown introduced into the Miltonic blank verse 
of his N orth-Country Wedding {Miscellaneous Poems, published by M. Concanen, 1724, 
p. 9) . Of Mr. Sherburn's parallels, aside from those in poems that have been or wiU be 
referred to, the following seem to me striking, though hardly sufficient by themselves to 
establish a case: "Warble . . . the wild-wood Notes" (William Thompson, Nativity, 
1736, in Poems, Oxford, 1757, i. 62, cf. Allegro, 134; the early borrowings from Allegro 
and Lycidas given above, p. 112, n. i, are from the work of another William 
Thompson) ; 

Fly, rigid Winter, with thy horid face. 
And let the soft and lovely Spring take place; 
Oh! come thou fairest season of the year, 
With garlands deck'd and verdant robes appear 

(Elizabeth Rowe, On our Saviour's Nativity, 1733, in Letters Moral and Entertaining, 
III. xii, Works, 1796, ii. 56, and cf. her To Mrs. Arabella Marrow, in Works, iii. 116-17); 

Onward she comes with silent step and slow, 

In her brown mantle wrapt, and brings along 

The still, the mild, the melancholy Hour, 

And Meditation, with his eye on heaven 

(David Mallet, Excursion, in Works, 1759, i. 77; and note "hoar hill," p. 71, cf. Allegro, 
55). Mallet certainly knew Penseroso later (see p. 451 below). Yet in the first edition 
of The Excursion (1728, the only one published before 1740), the last two lines quoted 
above appear as one. 

The serious Hour, and solemn Thoughtfulness; 

and, since the latter part of the first line is pretty clearly adapted from the last but one 
of Paradise Lost (with which Mallet was familiar) , there is little left in the passage to 
snggtst Penseroso. ' See Appendix A, below. 



430 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

however, be found to be in line with what we have already learned ; 
for, aside from Allegro and Penseroso, the minor poems had almost 
no influence before 1740, and even the number of pieces modelled on 
the companion poems (thirty) was decidedly small as compared 
either with the number that copied Paradise Lost in the same period 
or with the number that imitated the octosyllabics themselves a 
decade or two later. ^ 

Yet, if up to 1740 Milton's early productions had little of the 
vogue which his epic enjoyed, it is clear that they were known to 
many and were warmly admired by some. That is, the evidence 
would show that Joseph Warton went altogether too far in saying 
that Allegro and Penseroso "lay in a sort of obscurity, the private 
enjoyment of a few curious readers, till they were set to admirable 
music by Mr. Handel." ^ Warton refers to Handel's oratorio, 
L'' Allegro, II Pensieroso, ed II Moderato, which was first sung in 1740 
and was popular enough to require two printings of the libretto 
that year and five others before 1802.^ The success of this oratorio 
encouraged Handel to undertake immediately another composition 
with a Miltonic libretto, drawn this time from Samson Agonistes 
(1742), and by 1746 to complete his Occasional Oratorio, the words 
of which are taken mainly from Milton's translations of the Psalms. 
Since these last are among the minor poems, this use of them, 
wretched perversions of the Scriptures though they be, is interesting 
in the present connection; yet it is less significant than the interpo- 
lation into the Samson of a number of lines from the Nativity, On 
Time, At a Solemn Music, and the Epitaph on the Marchioness of 
Winchester.'^ Handel's music undoubtedly did much to make people 
familiar with Milton's work outside of the epic field, and in particular 
with the companion pieces; but those who admired the octosyllabics 
before 1740, like those who cared for Paradise Lost before 171 2, were 
by no means limited to "a few curious readers." Such off-hand re- 
marks as Warton 's regarding contemporary conditions are apt to 
carry more weight than they should; ^ and, as the author of this one 

1 These figures are summarized above, p. 9, n. i, and below, p. 469. 

2 Essay on Pope (1756), 4th ed., 1782, i. 40. 

^ Mr. Alwin Thaler {Milton in the Theatre, Univ. of North Carolina, Studies in Philol- 
ogy, xvii. 286) records three performances in London the first season, three in Dublin the 
following year, and six more by 1822. 

^ The last twelve lines of act i are adapted from On Time; four of the last six of act 
ii, and six of act iii, scene i, from the Nativity, stanzas vi, xvii, xxvi; six lines of act 
iii, scene iii, from the Marchioness of Winchester, 47-50, 67-8; and the last six lines of 
act iii from At a Solemn Music. Mr. Thaler notes (p. 278) eight performances in 1743 
and twenty-two more by 1829, besides at least twelve editions of the text (by Newburgh 
Hamilton) before 1840. 

* In the same volume, for example, he wrote (p. 154), "When Thomson published 



LATE VOGUE OF THE SHORTER POEMS 43 1 

was a schoolboy at Winchester from 1736 to 1740 and at Oxford 
from 1740 to 1744, he could have known very little about literary 
conditions at the capital. Certainly men who were to become the 
chief poets of the mid-century and were to give Milton's pieces their 
great vogue did not become acquainted with them through Handel's 
work. Gray was on the continent when the oratorio was given; 
besides, he had referred to Penseroso in a letter to Walpole in 1736, 
and the same year two of his intimate friends exhibited familiarity 
with other of the minor poems. '^ The Warton brothers undoubtedly 
gained their enthusiasm for Milton from their father, one of the 
earhest of the eighteenth-century admirers and imitators of the 1645 
volume; and Joseph Warton, in turn, probably made the poems 
known to his schoolmate and college friend Collins, the first of whose 
"Oriental Eclogues," written about 1738, shows the influence of 
Allegro. Nor could the popular Scottish poet, Hamilton of Bangour, 
have been attracted to the Puritan lyrics by Handel, as his Miltonic 
octosyllabics were composed at least a year before the oratorio was 
given. 

In fact, it seems highly probable that Warton had the cart before 
the horse, and that Handel came to use Allegro and Penseroso through 
the influence of some discriminating friends upon whom the beauty of 
the poems had recently dawned. For there are signs on every side, 
about this time, of an awakening, among more intelligent readers, to 
an interest in Milton's early work. Evidence of this new apprecia- 
tion is to be found in the rapid increase in the number of poems influ- 
enced otherwise than verbally by the octosyllabics. Before 1700 
there are only three such poems, between 1700 and 17 15 three, from 
1716 to 1725 seven, from 1726 to 1735 seven, from 1736 to 1740 (five 
years only) eleven, from 1741 to 1745 (five years) sixteen, and in 
1746 alone, an unusual year, sixteen. That is, the companion pieces 
seem to have exerted almost as much influence in the one year 1 746 
as they did in the ninety years before 1736, which is approximately 

his Winter ... it lay a long time neglected"; yet the second edition of Winter appeared 
within three months of the first. Thomas Warton, in his edition of Milton's minor 
poems (1785, p. x), remarked that blank verse "after its revival by Philips had been 
long neglected"; and H. J. Todd said in his edition of Contus (Canterbury, 1798, 
preface, p. xvi), "It was not till late in the present century, that Comus emerged from 
the obscurity in which it had long been buried," an assertion that will be shown to be 
absolutely false. Even the truth-loving Wordsworth wrote in 1815 {Prose Works, ed. 
Grosart, ii. 114) that Milton's minor poems were "little heard of till more than 150 
years after their publication," that is, not until 1800! 

* Correspondence 0} Gray, Walpole, etc. (ed. Toynbee, Oxford, 1915), i. 94, 79, 96. 
West's octosyllabic, The View from the Thatcht House, written in 1738, also shows un- 
mistakably the influence of Milton's companion poems (see p. 453 below). 



432 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

the state of affairs as regards all of Milton's early poems. Further- 
more, between 1728 and 1730 Pope referred to the "famous Allegro 
and Penseroso," and the Grub-Street Journal praised the latter poem 
while sneering at Dennis's adaptation of a line from it.^ In 1735 
appeared Hughes's new conclusion for what his editor termed "Mr. 
Milton's Incomparable Poem, entitled, // Penseroso.^' ^ Readers of 
the Gentleman's Magazine for April, 1737, would have come upon 
the phrase, "Or, as Milton elegantly expresses it. Music was married 
to Poetry" ^ During the same month they might have witnessed 
Paul Rolli's opera Sabrina, based upon Comus, and at about the 
same time might have seen an elaborate performance of Milton's 
Song on May Morning, which in 1 740 was printed in a collection of 
songs and cantatas.^ It was about 1738 that Say praised Lycidas,^ 
and probably a year or so earlier that Warburton declared Comus to 
be one of Milton's "three perfect pieces " and the companion poems 
"certainly master-pieces in their kind." ^ In 1739 Richard Barton 
put on the title-page of his Farrago ten lines from Penseroso, while in 
1740 the Gentleman's Magazine printed Browne's eclogue as "the 
best Imitation" of Lycidas,'' and Francis Peck brought out his Mem- 
oirs of Milton, in which are numerous references to the minor poems. 
A circumstance that may have awakened interest in the early as 
well as the later writings was the placing of a bust of the poet in 
Westminster Abbey in 1737. 

More important than any of these things, however, was the presen- 
tation of Comus at Drury Lane the next year. The masque was 
given, not as Milton wrote it, but with additional dances and songs 
(one of them, significantly enough, being twenty-six lines from the 
beginning of Allegro), for which the celebrated Dr. Thomas Arne 
wrote the music. As thus adapted, it was an immediate success. 
"Every Night that it has been perform'd," we are told, "the Audi- 
ence have receiv'd it with the utmost Satisfaction and Delight." ^ 
Four editions of this arrangement of the masque (by John Dalton) 
were printed in 1738 and two more by 1741; and in abbreviated, 
debased versions (made in 1772 by George Colman and 181 5 by 
Thomas J. Dibdin, and constantly changed through the introduction 
of new songs and dances) it enlisted the services of the chief English 

' Spence's Anecdotes (ed. Singer, 1820), 21; Memoirs of the Society of Grub-Street, 
no. 5 (Feb. 5, 1730). 

^ Poems (1735), vol. i, p. Iviii. ^ See p. 28 above. 

' vii. 195; cf. Allegro, 136-7. ^ See pp. 426-7 above. 

' Letter to Thomas Birch, Nov. 24, 1737, Nichols's Illustrations, ii. 79, 81. 

^ See p. 426 above. 

8 Universal Spectator, March 25, 1738, quoted in Gent. Mag., viii. 152. 



LATE VOGUE OF THE SHORTER POEMS 433 

actors and actresses until 1843.^ Yet the writer who gave an account 
of the first production thought it necessary to tell his readers that the 
work was "a Pastoral kind of Poem" and was ''wrote by Milton." ^ 

Too much time has perhaps been taken up with these quotations 
and figures, yet they throw light on a matter of considerable interest 
and importance. What the eighteenth century thought of Lycidas, 
for example, is in itself of no particular significance; the question 
becomes important only because Lycidas is a touchstone of poetic 
appreciation. The gradual awakening to the beauty of Milton's 
minor poems meant the passing of the monopoly which translations, 
pastorals, satires, and other forms of "wit" had held in the field of 
verse. It meant the quickening of the imagination, the renaissance 
of the lyric, and the bringing back into Enghsh poetry of the color, 
music, fragrance, and freedom which spell romanticism. 

There is, however, no need of following the career of the 1645 
volume through the remarkable vogue which lasted until the end of 
the century and affected almost every writer of lyrics between Gray 
and Keats, for this later popularity has already been touched upon 
and will receive abundant illustration in the chapters that follow. 
Instead, we may well ask ourselves how the rapid shift from igno- 
rance and indifference to widespread enthusiasm is to be explained if 
it is not due to Handel's oratorio. How is it that men, unacquainted 
with one another and living in different parts of England, began 
about the same time to pay attention to the poems? 

Aside from chance and the natural increase in the number of ad- 
mirers, the explanation is to be found principally in the change which 
was coming over English thought and Hfe and which in literature 
was marked by the passing of the dominance of Pope and his school. 
Not that pseudo-classicism was dead in England; on the contrary, 
at least fifty years of robust health lay ahead of it. But the extreme 
form, as manifested by Pope, Swift, Addison, and their contempo- 
raries, had lost its hold on Enghsh poetry. Pope's last work (except 
for the fourth book of The Dunciad) appeared in 1738, when the 
mind of Swift was well-nigh gone and Arbuthnot, Gay, Congreve, 
Prior, Addison, and Parnell had been dead from three to twenty 
years. The great figures that had ruled Enghsh taste and dominated 
Enghsh hterature for half a century were no more; younger men 
were coming to the front with tastes and ideals of their own. They 

^ A full account of the stage history of Comus is given by Mr. Thaler (North Carolina 
Studies, xvii. 289-308), who notes "one or more" productions almost every year down 
to 1820, with II in 1760, 21 in 1777, 10 in 1780, 15 in 1815 (a gorgeous spectacle, with a 
company of fifty), 18 in 1842, and 11 in 1843 (with Macready in the title-role). 

2 Same as note 8 on p. 432 above. 



434 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

also were classicists, but of a broader, less rigorous type than Pope or 
Addison, and by natural development and the strength they derived 
from one another they came in time to have many points of differ- 
ence from the poets who had immediately preceded them. The most 
marked of these differences lay in their abandonment of the couplet 
and their preference for the stanzaic, octosyllabic, true Pindaric, and 
sonnet verse-forms. Mason, for instance, until he was nearly fifty, 
when his taste seems to have changed, had used the heroic couplet 
but twice ; Collins employed it only twice in his earliest works. Gray 
devoted less than one page in thirteen to it,^ Joseph Warton but one 
in twenty, and his brother Thomas about one in five. Yet the father 
of the Wartons, though an imitator of Milton and Spenser as well as 
a writer of runic odes, had been sufficiently of the earlier generation 
to use it in over a third of his work. 

The rapidity with which the public taste thus swung away from 
the favorite meter of the neo-classicists is shown in the differences 
between the earlier and the later volumes of Dodsley's Collection of 
Poems. In the first three volumes (published in 1748) there are 57 
pages devoted to blank verse, 132 to octosyllabics, 205 to stanzas, 
and 404, or nearly half, to couplets; in the last three (the fourth pub- 
lished in 1755, the fifth and sixth in 1758) 73 pages are given to 
blank verse, 146 to octosyllabics, 427 to stanzas, and 246 (practically 
a quarter) to couplets.^ It will be noticed that in the ten-year inter- 
val the stanzaic poems have exchanged places with those in couplets. 
If either of these sets of figures be compared with those derived from 
t3q3ical miscellanies of the beginning of the century, it will be seen 
how great a change was coming over English meter. In the New 
Miscellany of Original Poems edited by Charles Gildon (1701) blank 
verse has 9 pages, octosyllabics have 11, stanzas 29, and couplets 
204; in the Poetical Miscellanies edited by Steele (17 14) blank verse 
has 2, octosyllabics have 12, stanzas 26, and couplets 217, in each 
case fully three-quarters of the volume being taken up by couplets. 

Coincident with this change in meter, and springing from the 
same cause, came the passing of the long poem. Until the close of 

* That is, in his original poems. His translations from Statius, Tasso, Propertius, 
and Dante, which he never published, are all in heroic couplets. 

2 These figures take no account of the fourteen sonnets in volume ii and the two in 
volume iv, of the epigrams in volumes ii and v, of pieces in anapestic tetrameter couplets, 
or of irregular or dramatic works that do not fall into any of the classes named. If we 
count the number of poems rather than the number of pages they occupy, we shall like- 
wise find that blank- verse and octosyllabic poetry gained greatly in popularity; for in 
the first three volumes there are 7 poems in blank verse, 34 in octosyllabics, 77 in 
stanzas, and 83 in couplets; in the last three, 18 in blank verse, 58 in octosyllabics, 
173 in stanzas, and 69 in couplets. 



LATE VOGUE OF THE SHORTER POEMS 435 

the century, when Mason in his old age produced three poems of 
length, the men of the new school had written only five pieces longer 
than Penseroso, and Gray, CoHins, and the elder Warton never pub- 
lished any that are so long.^ The younger men were weary of satires 
and arguments in verse: they wanted songs, they sought in poetry 
not reason but imagination. It is surprising, too, to find how clearly 
some of them realized and expressed their wants. Joseph Warton 
prefaced the Odes which he published in 1746 with the declaration: 

The Public has been so much accustom'd of late to didactic Poetry 
alone, and Essays on moral Subjects, that any work where the imagina- 
tion is much indulged, will perhaps not be relished or regarded. The 
author therefore of these pieces is in some pain least certain austere critics 
should think them too fanciful and descriptive. But as he is convinced 
that the fashion of moralizing in verse has been carried too far, and as he 
looks upon Invention and Imagination to be the chief faculties of a Poet, 
so he will be happy if the following Odes may be look'd upon as an at- 
tempt to bring back Poetry into its right channel.^ 

Similarly, in the preface to a volume of 17 61 Richard Shepherd tells 
his readers that the ode, the favorite species of verse with the new 
school, "is built intirely upon Fancy, and Ease and SimpHcity of 
Diction are its peculiar Characteristicks." 

When men held these ideas regarding reason and imagination in 
verse, it is not strange that the dominant influence in poetry passed 
from Pope to Spenser and Milton. We have seen that there is good 
reason for thinking Spenser attracted by no means so many readers 
as Milton; it might also be shown that his influence was practically 
confined to the Faerie Queene and did not affect his admirers so 
profoundly as that of the later poet did his. At any rate, no char- 
acteristic of the men of the new school is more marked than their ad- 
miration for Milton.' They praised him, imitated each of his poems 
in turn, borrowed words, phrases, or lines from him, and were so 
saturated with his works that many of their imitations and borrow- 

' CoUins's Ode on the Popular Superstitions of Scotland, which is forty-six lines longer, 
was not printed until 1788, many years after his death. 

2 Warton's discursive Essay on Pope (1756-82) is an examination of the poetry of 
Pope and his contemporaries in the light of these principles. The gist of it is expressed 
in the dedication: "In that species of poetry wherein Pope excelled, he is superior to 
all mankind: and I only say, that this species of poetry is not the most excellent one of 
the art." "A stroke of passion," he remarked in his Reflections on Didactic Poetry (ap- 
pended to his translation of Virgil, 1753), "is worth a hundred of the most lively and 
glowing descriptions. Men love to be moved, much better than to be instructed." 

' They have, accordingly, come to be spoken of as "the Miltonic group," an un- 
fortunate designation, since they were in reality less Miltonic than Philips, Thomson, 
Cowper, and others. 



436 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

ings were undoubtedly unconscious. Large numbers of their verbal 
pilferings are from Paradise Last, a circumstance which should be a 
sufficient answer to the charge that they did not care for the epic. 
As a matter of fact, the popularity of the octosyllabics and the 
monody received no httle help from the much greater vogue of the 
loftier work. Few unrimed poems, to be sure, were written by the 
(\^ new school. Collins cornposed_none, Gray but one (a translation), 
the three Wartons and Mason only fourteen altogether, and most of 
those less than one hundred lines in length; but their neglect of 
blank verse was due to a preference for lyric measures and for short 
pieces in which the epic meter is less likely to be used. The wide- 
spread enthusiasm for Milton's early productions and the frequent 
use made of them seem strange to most of us, who enjoy the poems, 
but without rapture or thought of imitating them. In 1 740, however, 
they swam like a new planet into the ken of those who were tired of 
gazing upon the more familiar constellations. The star, to be sure, 
was old, older than those they had been gazing upon, but it was new 
to them and possessed the strangeness in which Ues much of the 
fascination of beauty. 

The vogue of the poems was also due in no small measure to their 
being peculiarly adapted to the transitional character of the times. 
So much emphasis has been laid on the romanticism of the poets of 
the mid-eighteenth century that their fundamental classicism is apt 
to be overlooked. They unquestionably grew more romantic, but 
their classicism was so dyed in the grain that it could not be washed 
out, and colored almost every poem they wrote. It is vain to listen 
for notes which 

Charm magic casements, opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn ; 

one hears only "Philomela's voice." Of revolt there was very little. 
ConventionaUty continued to abound, propriety and decorum were 
always observed, and the personal note was rarely struck. Yet these 
men did have romantic yearnings; they seem, indeed, to have wanted 
to be romanticists but to have lacked the courage or not to have 
known how. They were interested in romantic things — - ruins, 
superstitions, Gothic architecture, early Celtic and Germanic poetry, 
and other remains of the picturesque past; they Hked suggestions of 
the strange and the mysterious, but for full-fledged romanticism 
they were not ready. Most Elizabethan Uterature, including Shake- 
speare's sonnets, left the greater part of them indifferent, and even 



LATE VOGUE OF THE SHORTER POEMS 437 

Warton regarded the stanza of his beloved Spenser as "so injudi- 
ciously chosen" that it "led our author into many absurdities." ^ 
It was not merely by chance that they ignored the Song to David and 
the Poetical Sketches, for they wrote nothing of the same kind them- 
selves. Curiosity and antiquarian interest were strongly developed 
in many of them, but the "renaissance of wonder," so marked in 
Blake, had not yet begun. It may be remembered that in 1798 Jane 
Austen made her Marianne, who represents excessive "sensibihty," 
exclaim, 

"To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost driven me 
wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful in- 
difference!" 

"... But you would give him Cowper," objects Mrs. Dashwood. 

"Nay, mamma," the young lady replies, "if he is not to be animated 
by Cowper!" ^ 

It was poetry like The Task, — quiet, contemplative descriptions of 
nature and country life, — or odes to abstractions, that the so-called 
romanticists of the eighteenth century enjoyed. For Christahel, the 
Solitary Reaper, The Cloud, and the Ode to a Nightingale they were 
not ready. They turned to Milton because to them, brought up 
under the neo-classic regime, his work seemed romantic in spirit and 
form and yet had the exquisite finish, the restraint, the reserve and 
impersonality, to which they were accustomed. It possessed for them 
the fascination of the strange without the shock of the inelegant, the 
thrill of adventure without its dangers and discomforts. 

Milton's early pieces were thus pecuHarly adapted to the awaken- 
ing lyricism of the romantically-inclined classicists of the mid- 
eighteenth century. Allegro and Penseroso, the most popular of all, 
are easy, friendly, yet dignified poems which convey the charm of the 
out-of-doors and of life in the country with a simplicity, a freshness, 
and a joy that are entirely lacking in the pseudo-classic pastorals. 
Yet they are not Wordsworthian: they mention only the obvious 
things, and those but briefly. They warm our hearts by their refer- 
ences to familiar sights and sounds, — the smoke from the cottage 
chimney, the distant bell, the rooster and hens, the nut-brown ale, 
the walks under arching trees and along the brook; yet, though 
real, the poems are not realistic, though homeUke and familiar, they 

1 Observations on the Fairy Queen (2d ed., 1762), i. 115, 114. 

2 Sense and Sensibility, ch. iii; cf . ch. x. 



438 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

are not personal. They give us pictures of the contemplative, 
scholarly leisure so attractive to the eighteenth century, and hints 

Of turneys, and of trophies hung, 
Of forests, and enchantments drear; 

but there is no romantic extravagance or excess, all is beautifully 
finished with delicate reserve and quiet loveliness. This is exactly 
what the poets of the time liked, what they sought to do in their own 
work. To reaHze this, one has only to recall two of the greatest and 
most admired short poems of the century, Gray's Elegy and Collins's 
Ode to Evening. Except for the melancholy tinge of the Elegy, which 
may be matched in Lycidas, the tone of these pieces is that of Mil- 
ton's early poems; they have similar descriptions of nature and of 
country life, and are marked by the same quiet refinement and care- 
ful but unobtrusive finish. Is it any wonder, then, that classicists 
with romantic leanings who wished to write short reflective or de- 
scriptive pieces of a kind that had not recently been in vogue, took 
as models the newly-discovered minor poems of Milton? 



I 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE INFLUENCE OF L'ALLEGRO 
AND IL PENSEROSO 

If we are to follow the influence of Milton's shorter poems without 
confusion, we must not attempt to jump back and forth from one to 
another, from octosyllabics to Lycidas, from sonnets to Comus; we 
must separate the several types and study each by itself. The octo- 
syllabics will naturally come first, since they were the first to make 
themselves felt, and in order to trace their influence it will be neces- 
sary to have their salient characteristics clearly in mind. These are : 

1. Doublets. In form the two poems are parallel throughout, 
though diametrically opposed to each other in meaning. 

2. Title. The titles are in Italian. 

3. Meter. The regular meter is iambic tetrameter; but fifty-six 
lines of Allegro and twenty-eight of Penseroso are, like the nine- 
syllable lines in Chaucer, without the initial unaccented foot, and 
thus may be regarded as catalectic iambics or trochaics.^ 

4. Cadence. There is a peculiar airy, lilting movement to the 
lines that distinguishes the poems from practically all other octo- 
syllabics, including Milton's own Epitaph on the Marchioness of 
Winchester. This cadence, particularly tripping and delicate in 
Allegro, more subdued and gentle in Penseroso, is never heavy, jerky, 
or abrupt, never falls into the jog-trot of Swift or Butler.^ 

5. Opening. The first ten Hnes differ from the rest in length and 
in rime-scheme. The old-numbered lines have six syllables each, the 
even ones ten. The rimes are ahhacddeec. 

1 Some critics deny that these lines are iambic, on the ground that such pause as 
there is comes after the second syllable rather than after the first. This is true of some 
lines, but by no means of all. 

2 The impression appears to be general that the alternation of catalectic and normal 
lines is alone responsible for this cadence. Such alternation probably does help, but it 
will be found also in the Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester and in many other 
pieces which are entirely without this peculiar lilt. To me the secret of the tripping 
movement seems to lie in the choice of words that give to each metrical accent practi- 
cally the same amount of stress, — for example, "quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles." 
Such a choice practically implies the elimination of the slighted stresses that are almost 
universal in poetry, and, since a word can have but one strong accent, the elimination 
of long words. It is also necessary for the lilting effect that the unaccented syllables 
shall be such as are lightly and quickly pronounced. Spondees make a line heavy. 



440 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

6. Personifications. Personified abstractions, such as Melan- 
choly, Mirth, Jest, Jollity, Contemplation, Peace, and many more, 
play an important part. 

7. ''Hence." An execrated personified quality (or qualities) is 
described by implication and bidden to flee. 

8. "Come." A desired personified quality is described and in- 
voked. 

9. Manner. The manner in which the invoked quaHty is re- 
quested to come is mentioned: for example, "Keep thy wonted 
state." Under this head may also be included the dress of the in- 
voked quality, which is given only in Penseroso. 

10. Parentage. The parents of both the invoked and the exe- 
crated qualities are named and characterized. 

11. Birth. The circumstances attending the courtship of the 
•parents of the invoked quality and those incident on her own birth 

are detailed. 

12. Train. The invoked quaHty is asked to bring with her an 
attendant train of personified abstractions similar to herself. These 
companions are also characterized. 

13. Occupations. The occupations of the thoughtful and of the 
light-hearted man are given. The latter, for example, walks out into 
the country, watches the milkmaid and the mower, goes to the city, 
witnesses pageants, attends the theater, reads, listens to music, etc. 

14. Ending. The speaker desires to live with the invoked quality 
if she can furnish such pleasures as he has mentioned. 

Must an eighteenth-century poet whose work shows a number of 
these characteristics necessarily have derived them from Milton? 
This question, it should be noted, is not equivalent to "Are these 
characteristics found in pre-Miltonic poetry?" but rather to "Are 
these characteristics found in pre-Miltonic poems which eighteenth- 
century poets are likely to have known and copied?" The former 
query it is difiicult to answer, the latter can be answered easily and 
emphatically, "No." Aside from meter and personification, the 
features that have been enumerated were rare, and occurred only in 
pieces practically unknown and not Hkely to be imitated by the few 
who did know them. There was, of course, nothing new about iam- 
bic tetrameter: it was perhaps the commonest middle-English ro- 
mance meter; it was used in Hudibras, and was a favorite verse-form 
of Swift and Gay. Yet it was not popular in the Augustan period 
any more than it is to-day; hence its vogue in the third quarter of the 
eighteenth century is almost certainly due to Milton. Personified 



L' ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 441 

abstractions, too, are nearly as old as conscious thought and were no 
novelty in English poetry; they abound, for example, in Cowley. 
Poems devoted to such abstractions, like the middle-English Patience 
or Chaucer's Truth and Gentilesse, are frequently met with, and in a 
few of them the quahties are personified. But odes addressed to per- 
sonified abstractions, which rioted through English verse of the later 
eighteenth century and of which Wordsworth's Ode to Duty is a sur- 
vival, are rare before 1 730. Their popularity was apparently not the 
gradual development that might be expected; for an examination of 
the miscellanies from 1673 to 1731 in the Harvard Library (some 
sixty volumes, including several thousand pieces) has failed to bring 
to light any poems of this kind except two that are manifestly based 
on Allegro or Penseroso. Not more than six of the whole number are 
concerned with abstract qualities. As there is no better way of getting 
at the poetical temper of the time than through its miscellanies, 
which vary greatly in character, this testimony seems to be con- 
clusive, particularly as a search through the magazines shows that 
even so late as 1760 there were practically no poems addressed to 
abstractions.^ 

The use of such impersonal personified quaUties is in keeping with 
the neo-classic fondness for universal truths, with its preference for 
the general rather than the particular, for the abstract rather than 
the concrete. Yet abstractions seem, in a way, to have taken the 
place occupied in the earlier and more strictly neo-classic verse by 
Greek and Roman deities. ^ The poems that employ them are dis- 
tinguished from most other lyrics by a lack of individual experience 
or feeling, a defect that is largely responsible for their barrenness. 
Their vogue appears to have begun about 1742 with the elder Warton, 
Gray, and Collins, who wrote many of them; indeed, the first 
volumes of Collins and Joseph Warton contain little else. Other 
young poets, vaguely dissatisfied and half-consciously wishing for 
more lyric forms, turned eagerly to this one to furnish the wings for 
their flight. The fuel was, therefore, ready for the fire. The spark 
almost certainly came from Allegro and Penseroso, for the odes to 
personified qualities were under a very heavy debt to the structure, 
phraseology, and content of Milton's octosyllabics. 

Without doubt all the rest of the "fourteen points" are to be 
found in earlier verse, and several of them presumably occur now 

1 There were, of course, the comparatively few modelled on Allegro and Penseroso 
which are noted below in Bibliography II. 

2 "The proper substitute for this servile and unlawful use of mythology," says 
George Dyer {Poetics, 1812, ii. 148-9), "... is, in my opinion, personification, a modest 
use of which gives grace and dignity to poetry." 



442 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

and then in the same piece; yet it is safe to say that very few English 
or American poets of to-day are familiar with any poems except 
Milton's written before 1700 which have these features. If this be 
true of the twentieth century, how much truer must it be of the 
eighteenth, a period notorious for its ignorance of preceding litera- 
ture! Only an antiquary of the time is likely to have known any 
poems similar to Allegro. "But," someone objects, "at least two 
of the leading poets of the time, Gray and Thomas Warton, were 
very learned in the field of letters, and Collins and Joseph Warton 
had no little interest in antiquarian matters." True enough; but 
even if these men were familiar, as they probably were, with the 
lines by Burton, Fletcher, and Marston which are thought to have 
influenced Milton in composing his octosyllabics, if they had come 
upon the dehcate. Kiting octosyllabics of Wither's Shepherd's Hunt- 
ing,^ or had read the chorus in Kyd's translation of Garnier's Cor- 
nelia,^ or had noticed the personifications tripping lightly through 
Cowley's tetrameter, yet, saturated as they were with Milton, would 
they have been Hkely in their own writing to turn from their favorite 
author to copy a neglected minor poet? To-day this might be done, 
for we seek the unusual and the out-of-the-way, we cherish the ele- 
ment of strangeness in beauty; but eighteenth-century bards did not. 
The influence of Milton's octosyllabics was at first confined to an 
occasional phrase, a few lines, or a stanza, and throughout the cen- 
tury many pieces were affected no more deeply than this. Yet along 
with these poems there came, before a great while, to be others in 
which the influence was not external and occasional but structural 
and vital, poems cut, so to speak, after the Allegro-Penseroso pattern. 
Halfway between such imitations and the merely phrasal borrow- 
ings (early instances of which have already been given ^) stands the 
work of John Hughes, Though Swift and Pope agreed that Hughes 
was "among the mediocribus/' * he is of considerable interest to a 
student of the lyric awakening. He was very fond of music, played 
himself, and composed a large number of cantatas and other poems 
for music, as well as one of the first operas given in English, Scat- 
tered through these pieces are brief songs (written in short lines 
and obviously intended to be sung), which, though otherwise unin- 
teresting, show an attempt to be lyric. These facts, together with 
the love for nature and descriptive poetry and the preference for 

* Eclogue iv, 

^ IV. ii. 188-95. Mr. H. M. Ayres called my attention to this chorus. 
^ See above, pp. 422-9 passim. 

* Letter from Swift to Pope, Sept. 3, 1735; and one from Pope to Swift, Sept. or 
Nov., 1735. 



L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 443 

country life apparent in his work,^ make Hughes seem like one of 
the Gray-Collins-Warton group born out of due time. He certainly 
possessed in common with these men a love for Spenser, whom he 
edited, and for Milton, whom he imitated. As early as 1697 he 
began a poem with this obvious borrowing from the opening of 
Allegro: 

Hence slavish Fear! thy Stygian Wings display! 
Thou ugly Fiend of Hell, away! 
Wrapp'd in thick Clouds, and Shades of Night, 
To conscious Souls direct thy Flight ! 
There brood on Guilt, fix there a loath'd Embrace, 
And propagate vain Terrors, Frights, 
Dreams, Goblins, and imagin'd Sprights, 
Thy visionary Tribe, thy black and monstrous Race.^ 

These lines are from one of Hughes's two paraphrases of odes of 
Horace, each of which begins with a stanza not in the original but 
derived from Milton. In his Court of Neptune (1699), moreover, he 
has the phrase ''your little Tridents wield," and in his Ode in Praise 
of Musick (1703) the line "Let the deep-mouth'd Organ blow."^ 
Hughes also wrote a "Supplement and Conclusion" to Penseroso, 
and two octosyllabics which recall Milton's poems in that meter. 
One, A Thought in a Garden, written in 1704, begins: 

Delightful Mansion! Blest Retreat! 
Where all is SUent, all is Sweet! 
Here Contemplation prunes her Wings, 
The raptur'd Muse more tuneful Sings, 
While May leads on the Chearful Hours.* 

The other, The Picture, is closer to Allegro: 

Queen of Fancy! hither bring 
On thy gaudy-feather'd Wing 
All the Beauties of the Spring. 
Like the Bee's industrious Pains 
To collect his Golden Gains, 
So from ev'ry Flow'r and Plant 
Gather first th' immortal Paint. 
Fetch me Lilies, fetch me Roses, 
Daisies, Vi'lets, Cowslip-Posies.^ 

^ See his essay On Descriptions in Poetry {Poems, 1735, ii. 329-35), and his poem A 
Letter to a Friend in the Country {ib. i. 111-13), both written before 1720. 

2 Horace, Book i. Ode xxii {ib. i. 113). 

^ Poems, i. 35 (cf. Comus, 27), 165 (cf. Penseroso, 161). 

* Cf. Comus, 377-8; and the sonnet to the nightingale, 4. 

' For Hughes's other references to Milton, see his Poems, i. 250, and ii. 91, 317-18, 
333-4; his edition of Spenser (1715), vol. i. pp. xxvii, xxx, xxxvii, xxxix, xli, Ixviii, 
Ixxvii, ci, ex; and cf. p. 422 above. 



444 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Far greater powers than Hughes possessed were displayed by the 
accomplished Latinist, pleasing poet, and intimate friend of Pope, 
Swift, and Gay, — Thomas Parnell. One of Parnell's several octo- 
syllabics is a Hymn to Contentment (17 14), which has a Miltonic lilt 
quite unlike the cadence of the others : 

Lovely, lasting Peace of Mind! 

Sweet Delight of human kind! 

Heavenly born, and bred on high, 

To crown the Fav'rites of the Sky. ... 

Whither, O whither art thou fled, 

To lay thy meek, contented Head? . . . 

Ambition searches all its Sphere 

Of Pomp and State, to meet thee there. . . . 

Lovely, lasting Peace appear! 

This World it self, if thou art here. 

Is once again with Eden bless'd. 

And Man contains it in his Breast. 

More use of the structure of Allegro is made in his Health, an Eclogue, 
which is written in heroic couplets : 

Come, Country Goddess, come, nor thou suffice, 
But bring thy Mountain-Sister, Exercise. . . . 
Oh come, thou Goddess of my rural Song, 
And bring thy Daughter, calm Content, along. 
Dame of the ruddy Cheek and laughing Eye.^ 

Much of the dull Pindaric Ode for the New Year mdccxvi, in which 
Nicholas Rowe flattered the king, is in lines of four feet, and, be- 
sides other borrowings from Milton's companion poems, contains 
this passage : 

Hence then with ev'ry anxious Care! 
Begone pale Envy, and thou cold Despair! 
Seek ye out a moody Cell, 
Where Deceit and Treason dwell. . . . 
But thou Hope, with smiling Chear, 
Do thou bring the ready Year. 

In 1 7 18 William Hinchliffe published in his Poems, Amorous, 
Moral, and Divine, some four hundred octosyllabic lines entitled The 
Seasons, divided into four poems. Spring, Summer, Autumn, and 
Winter. The movement of Hinchliffe 's lines reminds one of Allegro, 

' Parnell's Hermit, which is also in heroic couplets, has the phrase "the dappled 
Morn arose" (line 149, cf. Allegro, 44), and the lines, 

Now sunk the Sun; the closing Hour of Day 

Came onward, mantled o'er with sober gray 
(lines 43-4, cf. P. L., iv. 598-9, 609). 



L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 445 

as do the personified abstractions, the description of their attire, and 
the pictures of nature; but the similarity is principally metrical, as 
will be seen from these, the most Miltonic passages in the poem: 

And now sweet Flora doth appear, 

The Nymph for ever young and fair. 

Lightly around her slender Waste 

A party-colour'd Mantle's cast ; 

Enrich'd with ev'ry Flow'r that grows. . . . 

She comes! the lovely graceful Queen! 

Wrap'd in a Robe of brightest Green. 

Phoebus, the gallant Goddess leads 

O'er the smooth Lawns and yellow Meads. . . . 

Summer by Mortals, but above 

She's call'd the Nut-brown Maid of Jove. . , . 

. . . glowing August bears her Train. 

In one Hand golden Ears of Corn, 

Poppies, and Lavender are born.^ 

The Allegro-Penseroso structure is combined with decidedly Mil- 
tonic blank verse in the Invocation of Health which Henry Baker, a 
naturalist of importance who married Defoe's daughter, published 
in 1723. Baker describes "lovely Hygeia," and then invokes her in 
the grand style: 

Vouchsafe thy presence ! nor yet leave behind 
Thy fair companions, sprightly exercise, 
Smiling good nature, hearty cheerfulness. . . .^ 

Most of the piece, however, is given over to "Disease (thine oppo- 
site) " and her "dire train" of personifications. 

It may be remembered that William Broome, the translator of a 
third of Pope's Odyssey and author of all the notes, also turned parts 
of Homer into the style and meter of Paradise Lost} In the dull 
tetrameter ode. Melancholy, that he composed in 1723 on the death 
of his daughter he made some use of the companion poems : 

1 Pages 45, 47, 49, 50. Summer, like Allegro, ends with a reference to the rescue of 
Eurydice by Orpheus. My attention was called to the poem by C. A. Moore's Prede- 
cessor of Thomson's Seasons {Modern Language Notes, 1919, xxxiv. 278-81). Cibber 
{Lives, 17 S3, v. 25-6) prints a lyric of Hinchliffe's, The Invitation, which ends thus: 

Haste, nymph, nor let me sigh in vain. 

Each grace attends on thee . . . 
For love and truth are of thy train. . . . 

2 Anthologia Hibernica (Dublin, 1793), i. 226. The phrase "her baleful eyes around 
Rolling" is from Paradise Lost (i. 56); and so are "unwieldy ... A bulk enormous" 
(cf. P. L., vii. 410-11) and "monsters dire! Centaurs, chimeras, gorgons" (cf. P.L., 
ii. 625-8). 

' See above, pp. 106-7. For the lines Broome borrowed from Lycidas, see above, 
p. 426. 



446 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Adieu vain Mirth, and noisy Joys! . . . 
Thou thoughtful Melancholy deign 
To hide me in thy pensive Train! . . . 
Come, blissful Mourner, wisely sad, 
In Sorrow's Garb, in Sable clad. . . . 
With solemn Pace, demure, and slow. 

The Hymn on Solitude which Thomson wrote the year he began 
The Seasons is simple, natural, and in one part charming. Unfortu- 
nately these, its most Miltonic lines, are not the best: 

HaU, mildly pleasing Sohtude, 
Companion of the wise and good . . . 
The herd of fools and villains fly. . . . 
Descending angels bless thy train. 
The virtues of the sage, and swain — 
Plain Innocence in white arrayed ... 
Rehgion's beams around thee shine . . . 
About thee sports sweet Liberty. ... 
Oh, let me pierce thy secret cell. 
And in thy deep recesses dwell! . . . 
When meditation has her fiU. 

The debt to Allegro is equally marked in the brief lyric, "Come, 
gentle god of soft desire," that Thomson sent to the Gentleman's 
Magazine in 1736.^ 

But, when it comes to pleasing octosyllabics, the almost-forgotten 
bard of the Fleece, John Dyer, whose blank verse is a none-too- 
successful copy of The Seasons, far outstrips Thomson and all his 
contemporaries. His Country Walk, to be sure, is in no way remark- 
able, though it contains such pleasant lines as, 

I am resolv'd, this charming Day, 
In the open Field to stray. 
And have no Roof above my Head, 
But that whereon the Gods do tread. 

But Grongar Hill is as delightful in its fresh love of nature as in its 
lilting meter: 

Grass and flowers Quiet treads, 

On the meads, and mountain-heads . . . 

And often, by the murm'ring rill. 

Hears the thrush, while all is still. 

Within the groves of Grongar Hill. 

Rarely did the eighteenth century moralize so charmingly as in the , 
passage, I 

^ For the numerous phrases from Milton's minor poems in Thomson's other works 
(some of them composed before either of these) , see below, Appendix A. 



L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 447 

A little rule, a little sway, 
A sun beam in a winter's day, 
Is all the proud and mighty have 
Between the cradle and the grave. 

And see the rivers how they run, 

Thro' woods and meads, in shade and sun, 

Sometimes swift, sometimes slow, 

Wave succeeding wave, they go 

A various journey to the deep. 

Like human life to endless sleep ! 

The cadence of these octosyllabics certainly recalls Allegro, as does 
the plan of the earlier part of the poem: 

Silent Nymph, with curious eye! . . . 
Come with all thy various hues. 
Come, and aid thy sister Muse. . . . 
Grongar, in whose mossy cells 
Sweetly-musing Quiet dwells. . . . 
So oft I have, the evening still . . . 
'Till Contemplation had her fiU.i 

Dyer's handling of his meter, his love of nature, and his pensive 
strain all indicate that a new current was moving in English verse. 
As yet it was not romanticism, but classicism turning in a new direc- 
tion. Dyer faced towards Shelley and Wordsworth, but he was 
nearer to Thomson and Gray, or even to Pope. Grongar Hill shows 
this, for as first published it was an irregular Pindaric ode and scarcely 
better than the rest of that wretched species. It contained some 
lines of eight syllables, and was presumably followed a little later by 
the Country Walk, entirely in octosyllabics. At any rate, the two 
pieces appeared in the same miscellany, which was edited in 1726 by 
Johnson's friend, the unfortunate Richard Savage.^ Apparently 
Dyer was told by his friends, or soon saw for himself, how much 
better were his octosyllabics than his Pindarics; for that same year 
he published Grongar Hill as we now have it,^ an interesting example 
of a work of art made in the reworking. 

Imitation of Milton's companion poems was by no means con- 
fined to octosyllabics or even to rime. In 1 73 1 appeared anonymously 

1 The phrase "mossy cells" in this last extract may be from Penseroso, 169, and 
"gardens trim" in the Country Walk, 115, from Penseroso, 50 (George Sherburn, in 
Modern Philology, xvii. 528, 525, cf . 520). 

* Miscellaneous Poems and Translations, 48-57, 60-66. Another piece in Dyer's 
characteristic octosyllabics. An Epistle to a Famous Painter, may be seen in Chalmers's 
English Poets, xiii. 251. 

' Miscellaneous Poems, published by D. Lewis (1726), 223-31. Grongar Hill influ- 
enced not a few eighteenth-century poems. In 1 785 it was made the subject of one of 
John Scott's " Critical Essays." 



448 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

eight pages of very Miltonic blank verse with the title // Penseroso 
and the motto (from Paradise Lost) "Solitude sometimes is best So- 
ciety." ^ In the first half of the poem, which pictures the hfe of a 
solitary nature-lover, much the same things are done as in Allegro. 
Two rather similar poems adopted Milton's title to emphasize their 
own melancholy strain, James Foot's blank- verse Penseroso (lyyi),^ 
and an anonymous // Penseroso, an Evening's Contemplation in St. 
John's Church-yard, Chester, a Rhapsody, written more than twenty 
years ago (1767), of which the Monthly Review remarked, "If this 
poem hath any merit at all, it is entirely local, from the objects it 
describes, and therefore we cannot recommend it beyond the 
precincts of St. John's church-yard in Chester, where it was born, 
and where it was buried, in the year of our Lord 1767; aged twenty 
years." ^ 

Another unexpected use of the Allegro-Penseroso structure ap- 
pears in the opening of Constantia, a very free and highly-sophisti- 
cated rendering of the Man of Law's Tale, which Henry Brooke, 
author of Gustavus Vasa and the Fool of Quality, contributed to 
Ogle's Canterbury Tales of Chaucer Modernis'd (1741). The poem 
begins, 

Hence, Want, ungrateful Visitant, adieu, 

Pale Empress hence, with all thy meager Crew, 

Sour Discontent, and mortify 'd Chagrin; 

Lean hollow Care, and self -corroding Spleen. 

After twelve more lines of evil spirits, Virtue is introduced with her 
long train of personified abstractions; then come more vices until the 
capital letters are well-nigh exhausted, then Virtue again, and finally 
the story, tilting on nicely-balanced heroic couplets. 

Truly, features of the companion poems were appearing in strange 
places and being put to strange uses ! Their plan and meter will be 
found in the verses under the second plate of Hogarth's "Rake's 
Progress" (1735)/ in the wedding entertaiimient which the poet- 

* Miscellany of Poems, published by J. Husbands (Oxford, 1731), 161-9. The closest 
verbal similarity to Milton is"divine Philosophy, Here [let me] ever dwell with Thee" 
(p. 164). A few lines (1-49, 363-94) of the unrimed Death which James Macpherson of 
Ossianic fame composed about 1750 show the influence of Milton's octosyllabics. 

2 See pp. 397-8 above. 

^ xxxvi. 409. The poem proves to have been written by Dr. William Cowper, a 
physician of Chester, who died in 1767. Another physician, "Dr. G. P. . . ." of Balti- 
more, used this same title of Milton's for a brief stanzaic piece on the sadness of winter 
and the gladness of spring {Europ. Mag., 1788, xiii. 222). 

* Dr. John Hoadly, who translated Holdsworth's burlesque Muscipula into the verse 
of Paradise Lost (see pp. 108, 318, above) , wrote a few tetrameter couplets for each plate 
of the series. Those under the third print contain the line (from Camus, 47), "Sweet 
poison of misused wine." The verses are all reprinted in "Dodsley's Miscellany" (1758, 



L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 449 

publisher Robert Dodsley wrote in 1732, and in the pantomime he 
composed in 1745.^ Sir William Blackstone (author of the Com- 
mentaries) employed them in 1744 to bid farewell to his muse and 
welcome to his new profession,^ while in 1746 Benjamin Hoadly 
unblushingly put them into a cantata which was sung in honor of 
the Duke of Cumberland's victory at Culloden.^ 

Early in 1745, a year after he published the Pleasures of Imagina- 
tion, Mark Akenside brought out his Odes on Several Subjects. In the 
words of the ''advertisement," the author "pretends chiefly ... to 
be correct," and this goal — a curious one for a lyric poet — is all 
he achieves. Yet the odes (which were subsequently increased from 
ten to thirty- three), though quite free from inspiration, move slowly 
with the new current in poetry; for, besides being stanzaic and often 
octosyllabic, they deal with nature and with personifications. One 
of the tetrameters, the Hymn to Cheerfulness, is in part clearly 
modelled on the companion poems: 

Come, Cheerfulness, triumphant fair, 
Shine through the hovering cloud of care: 
O sweet of language, mild of mien, 
O Virtue's friend and Pleasure's queen. . . . 
Thy lenient influence hither bring. 

The courtship of the parents of Cheerfulness and the account of her 
birth are patently taken from Allegro: 

As once ('twas in Astraea's reign) . . . 
It happen'd that immortal Love 
Was ranging through the spheres above. . . . 
When Health majestic mov'd along . . . 
And, known from that auspicious morn, 
The pleasing Cheerfulness was born. 

Nearly six years before the publication of his Odes Akenside had 
contributed to the Gentleman^ s Magazine a Hymn to Science, which 

V. 269-74) , in the volume that contains T/ze Grotto ("printed in . . . 1732 but never 
published." ih. 159) by Matthew Green, author of The Spleen. A page and a half, per- 
haps, of the ten pages of Green's easy, pleasant octosyllabics seem pretty clearly sug- 
gested by Milton's work in the same measure. Both Hoadly's and Green's borrowings 
are pointed out by Sherburn, pp. 519, 530, 520, 524. 
1 See Bibl. II, below. 

- In The Lawyer^s Farewel to his Muse ("Dodsley's Miscellany," 1755, iv. 228-32). 
The lines that are closest to Milton's are, 

Yet let my setting sun, at last, 
Find out the still, the rural cell, 
Where sage Retirement loves to dwell! 
' See Bibl. II. This occasion also called forth an anonymous octosyllabic ode in 
which the "goddess of immortal song" is asked to "descend, and bring along Fame, 
Concord," etc. {Gent. Mag., xvi. 267). 



450 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

he wisely never republished.^ These lines show the debt to 
Milton: 

Science ! thou fair effusive ray . . . 
Descend with all thy treasures fraught. . . . 
Disperse those phantoms from my sight . . . 
The scholiast's learning, sophist's cant. . . . 
Her secret stores let Memory tell, 
Bid Fancy quit her fairy cell, 

In all her colours drest. . . . 
While, undeluded, happier I 
From the vain tumult timely fly, 

And sit in peace with thee. 

This piece may have been in Swift's mind when he wrote his bur- 
lesque Ode on Science, which is similar in title and structure, has the 
same meter, and was composed about the same time, though perhaps 
earlier. Swift's Ode seems to ridicule the commonplaces of poetry, — 
which characterize Akenside's Hymn but become much more ob- 
noxious later in the century, — as well as the use of vague language 
that sounds impressive but means Httle or nothing. It was certainly 
directed at some of Milton's imitators: 

O, HEAVENLY born! in deepest dells 
If fairest science ever dwells 

Beneath the mossy cave. . . . 
Come, fairest princess of the throng, 
Bring sweet philosophy along, 

In metaphysic dreams. . . . 
Drive Thraldom with malignant hand . . . 
lerne bear on azure wing; 
Energic let her soar, and sing 

Thy universal sway. 

The Dean was himself the subject of a good-natured parody in 
Isaac Hawkins Browne's Pipe of Tobacco (1735-6). The last of the 
six "imitations" that make up this volume burlesques Swift; yet it 
makes some use of the Allegro-Penseroso structure, which Swift em- 
ployed only in the Ode on Science : 

Come jovial Pipe, and bring along 
Midnight, Revelry and Song; 
The merry Catch, the Madrigal, 
That echoes sweet in City Hall. . . . 

Britons, if undone, can go. 

Where Tobacco loves to grow. 

Probably Browne did not intend the "come" and "bring" and other 
Miltonisms as part of the imitation, but introduced them because 

* Gent. Mag., ix. S44 (1739); reprinted in the Aldine edition of his Works (1835), 
293-6. See also p. 471 below. 



L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 451 

they were associated in his mind with the octosyllabic, Swift's 
favorite meter. ^ 

Contentment^ which "E. L. " contributed to the Gentleman's Maga- 
zine for October, 1736, begins. 

Descend, celestial Peace of Mind! . . . 
Hence, murmurs, sighs, and Fears, exclude! 

and David Mallet's octosyllabic Fragment (1743?), though it does 
not make use of the "hence" or "come," has the Miltonic cadence 
and personifications and mentions a number of the things that are 
done in Penseroso. Health is first invoked: 

Thou oft art seen, at early dawn, 
Slow-pacing o'er the breezy lawn. . . . 
But when the sun, with noontide ray. 
Flames forth intolerable day; 
While Heat sits fervent on the plain, 
With Thirst and Languor in his train; 

then, "amid the shadows brown," Imagination listens to "every 
murmur of the wood," to the brook, the bee among the flowers, the 
"woodman's echoing stroke," and "the thunder of the falling oak."^ 
After 1740 the number of these imitations increased so rapidly 
that it would be both impracticable and unprofitable to consider 
them all. One that should be mentioned, however, not only for its 
length but because it illustrates the influence of Handel's oratorio 
U Allegro, II Pensieroso, ed II Moderato (1740), is The Estimate of 
Life (1746), which, like Handel's work, consists of three parts, The 
Melancholy, The Cheerful, The Moderate.^ John Gilbert Cooper, the 
author, who had used the verse and style of Paradise Lost the preced- 
ing year in his Power of Harmony,'^ did not hesitate to follow the 
companion poems as closely as this : 

Grim Sup>erstition, hence away, 
To native Night, and leave the Day; 
Nor let thy hellish Brood appear, 
Begot on Ignorance and Fear! 
Come gentle Mirth and Gaiety, 
Sweet Daughters of Society. 

An earlier, pleasanter, and more important writer of octosyllabics, 
but one who likewise belongs to the "minor orders," is WilUam 
Hamilton of Bangour, follower of the Pretender and author of The 
Braes of Yarrow. Though a mild classicist, Hamilton furnishes one 

1 Browne's Ode to Health, presumably written later than his Pipe of Tobacco, is also 
patently Miltonic. 

2 Cf. Penseroso, 122-44. ' See below, Bibl. II. * See above, pp. 393-4. 



452 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

of the many points of connection between Milton's work and the 
reappearance of romanticism in English poetry, for he was a con- 
tributor to Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany and a frequent imitator 
of Paradise Lost and of Allegro. Dr. Johnson, who scented romantic 
tendencies from afar, said that the verses of the young Scotsman 
were "nothing better than what you generally find in magazines; 
and that the highest praise they deserved was, that they were very 
well for a gentleman to hand about among his friends." The crush- 
ing truth of this criticism Boswell did not accept. " I comforted my- 
self," he tells us, "with thinking that the beauties were too delicate 
for his robust perceptions." ^ 

Four of Hamilton's octosyllabics, written in 1739 or somewhat 
earlier, have the cadence of Allegro, as well as the "hence," "come," 
the personifications, a number of verbal borrowings,^ and in one place 
something of the parentage and birth ,3 — pretty good evidence that 
he derived the meter, which he used extensively, from Milton. The 
structure of his second ode, which consists of four paragraphs, the first 
and third devoted to "hence," the second and fourth to " come," may 
help to account for the later vogue of the companion poems, for any 
one can write verses of this kind on any occasion or without occasion: 

Begone, pursuits so vain and light, 
Knowledge, fruitless of delight; 
Lean Study, sire of sallow Doubt. . . . 

^ Boswell's Life (ed. Hill), iii. 150-51. Hamilton shows some love of nature (see his 
Contemplation, in Poems, ed. Paterson, Edin., 1850, p. 39), which was probably stimu- 
lated by Dyer, for the line "Now on the flow'ring turf I lie" is borrowed from Grongar 
Hill, 138. 

^ Contemplation has the rimes "aged oak . . . woodsman's stroke," "pellucid stream . . . 
mystic dream" {Poems, 36, cf. Penseroso, 135-6, 147-8); and the phrases "sober-suited 
maid" (ib. 37, cf. Pew., 122), "the decent nun fair Peace of Mind" iib.,ci. Pen., 31, 36), 
and "above, below, and all around" {ib. 39, cf. Pen., 152, of sound in each case). Ode I, 
To Fancy, has "meek-ey'd Peace" {ib. 49, cf. Nativity, 46), "fickle troop of Morpheus' 
train" {ib., cf. Pen., 10), and 

In a gown of stainless lawn, 

O'er each manly shoulder drawn? 

Who, clad in robe of scarlet grain 

The boy that bears her flowing train? 
{ib. 48, cf. Pen., 33-6); the manuscript version has "clouds . . . skirts of gold" {ib. 56, 
cf. P. L., V. 187), and 

Or view the honey-making bee 

Load with sweets her amber thigh 
{ib.,ci. Pen., 142, and cf. the whole passage with Pen., 131-48). Ode II has "Nods, and 
wreaths, and becks and tips" {ib. 53, cf. Allegro, 28). Miss and the Butterfly and On a 
Summer-House, which owe little else to Milton, have the expressions "as sages sing" 
{ib. 53, cf. All., 17) and "Here chaste Calliope, I live with thee" {ib. 115, cf. All., 152, 
few., 176). 

* Contemplation, ib. 2,7. 



L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 453 

I come, nor single, but along 
Youthful sports a jolly throng! 
Thoughtless joke, and infant wiles; 
Harmless wit, and virgin smiles. . . . 

But, anxious Care, be far from hence; 
Vain surmise, and alter'd sense; 
Mishapen doubts, the woes they bring; 
And Jealousy, of fiercest sting. . . . 

But come, all ye who know to please; 
Inviting glance, and downy ease . . . 
Nods, and wreaths, and becks and tips; 
Meaning winks, and roguish trips. 

In August, 1738, Richard West, Gray's friend, while visiting 
Horace Walpole at Richmond Park, was asked to ''write something" 
upon the "Thatcht House" there. Accordingly, he sent Walpole 
over one hundred and twenty-five not unpleasant octosyllabic lines, 
of which the following and some others reveal a familiarity with 
Allegro: 

Fallows grey, and pastures green. 

Where herds and flocks are grazing seen, 

With many a woody park, & hill 

Hanging o'er some shadowy rill. . . . 

There oft, ere yet the grey-eyed Dawn 

Has visited the dewy lawn. 

The early chace with cheerful yell 

Calls sleepy Echo from her cell. . . . 

Observe the reapers' tawny band, 

Each with his sickle in his hand.^ 

Four years afterwards Gray received from him an octosyllabic ode 
divided into stanzas, which uses the " come " and the train of personi- 
fications : 

Come, fairest Nymph, resume thy reign! 

Bring all the Graces in thy train! 

With balmy breath, and flowery tread. 

Rise from thy soft ambrosial bed. . . . 

Come then, with Pleasure at thy side.^ 

About the time West wrote his Hues on the "Thatcht House " 
another Miltonic piece was being composed, the earliest we have 

^ Correspondence of Gray, Walpole, West, etc. (ed. Toynbee, Oxford, 1915), i. 191-3- 

* These lines are from the version given by Mason in the "Memoirs" prefixed to 

Gray's Poems, 1775, pp. 147-8. D. C. Tovey {Gray and his Friends, Camb., 1890, pp. 

165-6) publishes a form that differs considerably and is rather less Miltonic. It has the 

lines, 

Oh, come with that enchanting Face 
That lively Look, that youthful Grace! 
For another passage reminiscent of Allegro, see West's monody (below, pp. 550-51.) 



454 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

from the pen of the most inspired and possibly the most nearly 
romantic poet produced in the first eighty years of the century, 
William Collins, who like Smart and Clare paid dearly for his gifts 
by spending some of his last years in an insane asylum. The dis- 
ordered minds of these three men, the peculiarities of Blake, and 
the tragic lives of Burns, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Byron give 
some basis for thinking romanticism a disease. Yet there is nothing 
diseased or morbid in Collins's clean-cut work, nothing ecstatic or 
violent even; rather it is dehcate, reserved, and, what is more sur- 
prising in view of the rare beauty of the best of it, not really lyric. 
Collins seems not to have had the singing voice, and his fondness for 
abstractions was opposed to the concreteness of the lyric. ^ Yet in 
lacking the singing quality, in being descriptive and contemplative 
rather than emotional, and in employing many personified abstrac- 
tions, his poems are typical of their time. 

It is surely significant that in his Ode on the Poetical Character, 
although he refers to the " school " of Spenser and to an episode in 
the Faerie Queene, Collins mentions no poet but Milton, and that 
he devotes twenty-two lines to him, more space than he gives to any 
other English writer except Shakespeare in all the rest of his work 
put together. The description of the cliff, which symbolizes Milton 
in the passage, shows how the romantic classicists of the day looked 
upon him: 

High on some clifT, to heav'n up-pil'd, 

Of rude access, of prospect wild, 

Where, tangled round the jealous steep. 

Strange shades o'er-brow the valleys deep, 

And holy genii guard the rock, 

Its glooms embrown, its springs unlock, 

While on its rich ambitious head 

An Eden, like his own, lies spread. . . . 
Thither oft, his glory greeting, 
From Waller's myrtle shades retreating. 

With many a vow from Hope's aspiring tongue, 

My trembling feet his guiding steps pursue; 
In vain — such bliss to one alone 
Of all the sons of soul was knov/n. 

As the "his" in these lines means "Milton's," we have in the con- 
cluding lines a frank avowal of ColUns's attempt to follow the earlier 
poet. There is, to be sure, nothing to indicate a knowledge of Allegro 
or the other minor poems, but such knowledge is abundantly at- 
tested by the verbal borrowings and the structure of this and other 

^ One would not, of course, expect anything impassioned or ecstatic from him; but 
songs of the type of "Hark, hark, the lark" or " Who is Sylvia? " he might have written. 



L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 455 

odes. Of words and phrases taken from Milton there are in all some- 
thing over twenty, a fair number considering how little Collins wrote; 
yet few of them are obvious, and as a rule they consist of only a word 
or two. Occasionally one finds as patent a borrowing as "round him 
rolls his sullen eyes; ^ but more typical are "nature boon," "love- 
darting eye," "the meeting soul," or such dubious cases as "upland 
fallows," "buskin'd Muse," or the use of "decent" in the sense of 
"decorous." ^ 

Milton's influence upon the meter and plan of Collins's odes is of 
the same elusive kind. It is most clearly seen in The Manners: 

Farewell, for clearer ken design'd, 
The dim-discover'd tracts of Mind. . . . 
Where Science, prank'd in tissu'd vest, 
By Reason, Pride, and Fancy drest. 
Comes like a bride so trim array'd, 
To wed with Doubt in Plato'? shade! . . . 
Thy walks, Observance, more invite! . . . 
Retiring hence to thoughtful cell. 
As Fancy breathes her potent spell . . . 
In pageant quaint, in motley mask. . . . 

Humour, thou whose name is known . . . 
Me too amidst thy band admit, 

There where the young-ey'd healthful Wit . . . 
In laughter loos'd attends thy side! . . . 
The Sports and I this hour agree 
To rove thy scene-full world with thee! 

Here we have the meter, personifications, train, manner, and dress, 
a kind of "hence" and "come," verbal borrowings, and the ending. 
Most of these characteristics may also be discovered in the Ode to 
Fear: 

Ah Fear! ah frantic Fear! 

I see, I see thee near! 

1 know thy hurried step, thy haggard eye! ... 
For lo what monsters in thy train appear! 
Danger, whose limbs of giant mold . . . 

And with him thousand phantoms join'd . . . 
Whilst Vengeance, in the lurid air, 
Lifts her red arms, expos'd and bare . . . 
Who, Fear, this ghastly train can see, 
And look not madly wild, like thee? . . . 
Say, wilt thou shroud in haunted cell, 
Where gloomy Rape and Murder dwell? 

^ Popular Superstitions, 102; of. P. L., i. 56. 

2 Manners, 71 (of. P. Z,.,iv. 242); Poetical Character, 8 (of. Comus, 753); Simplicity, 
48 (of. Allegro, 138); Evening, 31 (of. Allegro, 92); Pity, 34 (of. Penseroso, 102); Sim- 
plicity, 10 (cf. Penseroso, 36). 



456 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Or in some hollow'd seat. . . . 
Ne'er be I found, by thee o'eraw'd, 
In that thrice-hallow'd eve abroad 
When ghosts, as cottage maids beUeve, 
Their pebbled beds permitted leave. 
And goblins haunt, from fire, or fen, 
Or mine, or flood, the walks of men! . . . 
Hither again thy fury deal ! . . . 
And I, O Fear, will dwell with thee! ^ 

Milton's accounts of the wooing of the parents of Mirth and Melan- 
choly are reflected in the Ode on the Poetical Character, where Collins, 
through his fondness for the Allegro-Penseroso structure, is led into 
obscurity and the bad taste of representing the Creator as courted 
by Fancy, who gives birth to the sun ! 

Long by the lov'd enthusiast woo'd, 
Himself in some diviner m.ood. 
Retiring, sate with her alone . . . 
And thou, thou rich-hair 'd Youth of Morn, 
And all thy subject life, was born! 
The dang'rous Passions kept aloof . . . 
But near it sate ecstatic Wonder, 
List'ning the deep applauding thunder; 
And Truth, in sunny vest array 'd. 

These similarities to Milton in Collins's various poems can hardly 
be due to chance, for he wrote slowly and revised carefully. A few 
lines from three other odes will show how the structure of the com- 
panion pieces repeatedly crops out in his work : 

Come, Pity, come! By Fancy's aid. . . . 
There Picture's toils shall well relate . . . 
The buskin'd Muse shall near her stand. . . . 
There let me oft, retir'd by day, 
In dreams of passion melt away, 
Allow'd with thee to dwell.^ 

O Peace, thy injur'd robes up-bind! 
O rise, and leave not one behind 

Of all thy beamy train! . . . 
But come to grace thy western isle. 

By warlike Honour led! ' 

1 Line 58, "Ne'er be I found, by thee o'eraw'd," forms a kind of "hence." The two 
lines beginning "And goblins haunt" (62-3) are to me more suggestive of Penseroso, 
93-4, than are any of the parallels given by W. C. Bronson on page 99 of his excel- 
lent edition of Collins. 

2 Pity, 25-39. ' Peace, 13-21. 



L' ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 457 

O Music, sphere-descended maid, 
Friend of Pleasure, Wisdom's aid. . . . 
O bid our vain endeavours cease, 
Revive the just designs of Greece, 
Return in all thy simple state. ^ 

The last extract also gives an idea of the poet's tetrameter, a meter 
he uses considerably but never throughout a poem. This passage is 
his nearest approach to Milton's cadence. 

Collins began copying Allegro when he was about seventeen, in 
what seems to be the first poem we have from his pen. As the piece 
in question, the first "Oriental Eclogue," is a conventional, pseudo- 
classic pastoral in heroic couplets, it is the last place where one would 
think of looking for the Allegro structure. Yet here it is unmis- 
takably : 

Come thou, whose thoughts as limpid springs are clear. 

To lead the train; sweet Modesty, appear. . . . 

With thee be Chastity, of all afraid. 

Distrusting all, a wise suspicious maid. . . . 

No wild Desires amidst thy train be known. 

But Faith, whose heart is fix'd on one alone; 

Desponding Meekness with her down-cast eyes; 

And friendly Pity full of tender sighs. ^ 

Six of Collins 's fourteen odes and one of his ten remaining pieces 
are therefore affected by the plan of the octosyllabics, a greater per- 
centage than is found in any other English writer. Inasmuch as his 
finest work, the Ode to Evening, is in the unrimed stanza of Milton's 
translation from Horace and his Ode to Simplicity seems to employ 
a modification of the Nativity stanza ,* and as he borrowed a number 
of phrases, he was under no small debt to Milton's earlier poems. 

If the patient reader of this volume were to stroll through the 
glorious but sadly-disfigured aisles of Westminster Abbey until he 
reached the transept which is paved and lined with the tombstones 
of illustrious poets, his eye in the course of its wanderings might 
chance to light on the monument to Gray. If so, he would notice a 
female figure holding in one hand a medallion of the poet and with 
the other pointing upward to the bust of Milton. On the base of the 
statue he would read, 

No more the Grecian Muse unrivall'd reigns, 
To Britain let the nations homage pay; 

She felt a Homer's fire in Milton's strains, 
A Pindar's rapture from the lyre of Gray. 

* Tke Passions, 95-117. ^ For these two poems, see below, pp. 561-2, 565-6. 

* Lines 53-66. 



458 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

If the sight of this memorial should lead him on his return home to 
open a volume of the poet, he might notice that the first line on the 
first page and the last line but five on the last page contain phrases 
from Milton. If he were to glance up this last page he might ob- 
serve three other borrowings from the same source, and were he to 
continue his readings he would find many more of the same kind. A 
number of them, like "margent green," "starry fronts," "vermeil- 
cheek," "not obvious, not obtrusive," ^ are so slight that he would 
dismiss them, did he not remember Gray's slow, painstaking, self- 
conscious method of composition.^ There are in all about fifty verbal 
borrowings from Milton, or almost one to a page.^ Yet Gray's fine 
taste taught him how to borrow, for every phrase he takes he as- 
similates so that it seems his own, A typical instance is the line 

Right against the eastern gate, 

which he transfers from the joyous sunrise of Allegro to the grim 
nether- world of the Descent of Odin, fitting it so perfectly into its new 
surroundings that the average reader does not suspect any indebted- 
ness. Although originahty is not a striking characteristic of Gray's 
work, his fastidiousness did not allow him to compose the patent 
imitations that were common in his day. Accordingly, much as he 
admired the "voice as of the cherub-choir " he modelled none of his 
poems upon those of Milton. Parts of two of them do, however, 
show a decided influence from the 1645 volume. There can, for ex- 
ample, be no question as to the source of these stanzas from one of 
his earliest pieces, the Hymn to Adversity: 

Scared at thy frown terrific, fly 

Self -pleasing Folly's idle brood, 
Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy, 

And leave us leisure to be good. 
Light they disperse, and with them go 
The summer Friend, the flatt'ring Foe; 
By vain Prosperity received. . . . 

Wisdom in sable garb array 'd 

Immers'd in rapt'rous thought profound, 

' Eton College, 23 (cf. Cotnus, 232); The Bard, 112 (cf. Passion, 18); Pleasure aris- 
ingfrom Vicissitude, 3 (cf. Comus, 752); Ode for Music, 78 (cf. P. L., viii. 504). 

* "No poetry is less spontaneous than Gray's; of him it is emphatically true that 
there is 'not a line of his, but he could tell us very well how it came there'" (Tovey,. 
Gray's English Poems, Camb., 1898, p. 123). 

^ Gray also dropped into Mil tonic language in his letters, — as when he wrote to 
Walpole (Sept., 1737), "At the foot of one of these Itrees] squats me I (il penseroso) "; 
or to James Brown (Dec. ?, 1759), "I am glad to find you are so lapt in music at Cam- 
bridge" (cf. Allegro, 136). 



L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 459 

And Melancholy, silent maid 

With leaden eye, that loves the ground, 
Still on thy solemn steps attend: 
Warm Charity, the general Friend, 

With Justice to herself severe, 
And Pity, dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear. 

Here we have the personifications, the train, the manner, a modified 
form of the "hence" and "come," and several Miltonic phrases. 

None of Gray's octosyllabics have Milton's cadence; the nearest 
approach to it is to be found in these more abrupt lines : 

Where he points his purple spear, 
Hasty, hasty Rout is there, 
Marking with indignant eye 
Fear to stop, and shame to fly: 
There Confusion, Terror's child. 
Conflict fierce, and Ruin wild.^ 

Gray's last poem was the perfunctory Ode for Music, written for 
the installation of the Duke of Grafton as chancellor of Cambridge 
University. It is a stilted, dreary piece, for Gray's heart was not in 
it; even Mr. Tovey's praise, "good as it is amongst Installation 
Odes," 2 is not reassuring. Yet in the present connection the poem 
is of interest, for it begins with the "hence," the personifications, 
and the meter of Allegro: 

Hence, avaunt, ('tis holy ground) 

Comus, and his midnight crew, 
And Ignorance with looks profound, 

And dreaming Sloth of pallid hue, 
Mad Sedition's cry profane. 
Servitude that hugs her chain. 
Nor in these consecrated bowers 
Let painted Flatt'ry hide her serpent-train in flowers. 

After as much more of this sort of thing, Milton appears and speaks 
in the stanza of his Nativity, using a number of his own phrases. 
Outside of these passages, the Ode contains at least six Miltonic bor- 
rowings. It appears, therefore, that when Gray had a poem to write 
and did not know what to say he turned to Milton to furnish him a 
kind of form which he might fill out. Most versifiers of the later 
eighteenth century did the same, only with them it was the rule to 
have nothing to say. 

T3^ical of such writers is the uninspired but indefatigable William 
Mason. It speaks ill for the judgment of the time that Mason was 

' Triumphs of Owen, 33-8. ^ Gray's English Poems, 281. 



460 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

taken very seriously as a poet. As a friend and biographer of Gray 
he is still known, but no one thinks of reading his verses, which are 
significant merely because they embody with unusual clearness cer- 
tain tendencies of the time. The better taste of his friends usually 
kept them from flagrant imitation, but Mason was not one to do 
things by halves. Since he had started to imitate Milton, he carried 
the matter to its logical conclusion. Beginning with a slavish copy of 
Allegro and then one of Penseroso, he followed them with a professed 
imitation of Lycidas; later he composed Miltonic sonnets, wrote a 
long poem on the English garden in Miltonic blank verse, borrowed 
a scene from Milton's masque, and even proposed to Dodsley to edit 
the minor poems.^ 

Mason's // Bellicoso and // Pacifico show to what extremes the 
copying of Milton often went: they have every characteristic of 
U Allegro and // Penseroso save the essential one, beauty. They are 
companion poems, parallel in structure and opposed in meaning; the 
titles, the irregular opening, the "hence," the "come," the move- 
ment of the lines, the contents, the phrasing, the ending, — every- 
thing is slavishly copied. But // Pacifico may speak for itself: 

Hence, pestilential Mars, 

Of sable-vested Night and Chaos bred, 

On matter's formless bed, 
Mid the harsh din of elemental jars: 

Hence with thy frantic crov/d, 
Wing'd Flight, pale Terror, Discord cloth'd in fire. . . . 

But hail, fair Peace, so mild and meek, 
With poHsh'd brow and rosy cheek . . . 
For Saturn's first-born daughter thou ; 
Unless, as later bards avow, 
The youthful God with spangled hair 
Closely clasp'd Harmonia fair. . . . 
Then to the city's social walls. . . . 
And ev'ry man and ev'ry boy 
Briskly join in warm employ. . . . 
And joys like these, if Peace inspire, 
Peace with thee I string the lyre. 

There is some influence from Milton's octosyllabics in parts of 
three of Mason's odes, none of which preserve either the iambic 

1 Ralph StrdiWS,, Robert Dodsley (1910), 114. On Mason's poems, see above, pp. 
375-7, and below, pp. 496, 551-2, 557. His classical tragedies may owe something to 
Samson Agonistes (but see p. 559 below), as they certainly do to the epic and octosyl- 
labics. In one of the choruses of his Caractacus,{ox example, he uses "the descant 
bold" {Works, 1811, ii. no, cf. P. L., iv. 603), and "lapt ... in ecstasy" {ih. in, cf. 
Allegro, 136, of music in each case), besides employing bits of the Allegro-Penseroso 
structure. 



i 



L' ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 46 1 

tetrameter or the Allegro-Penseroso structure throughout. The first 
extract is from the fifth ode, For Music: 

Come, imperial Queen of Song; 
Come with all that free-born grace . . . 
That glance of dignity divine, 
Which speaks thee of celestial line; 
Proclaims thee inmate of the sky, 
Daughter of Jove and Liberty. . . . 
Still may'st thou keep thy wonted state 
In unaffected grandeur great. 

The second stanza of the sixth ode. To Independency, begins. 

Come to thy vot'ry's ardent prayer. 

In all thy graceful plainness drest : 

No knot confines thy waving hair, 

No zone, thy floating vest; 
Unsullied Honour decks thine open brow. 
And Candour brightens in thy modest eye. 

The twelfth ode, To the Naval Officers of Great Britain, opens as 
follows : 

Hence to thy Hell! thou Fiend accurst, 
Of Sin's incestuous brood, the worst 
Whom to pale Death the spectre bore: ^ 
Detraction hence! 'tis Truth's command. . . . 
Old England's Genius leads her on . . . 
The Goddess comes, and all the isle 
Feels the warm influence of her heav'nly flame. 

The verses of the elder Thomas Warton (i688?-i745) contain in 
the germ most of the things that were to make his sons' work dis- 
tinctive. They show a love for nature, ruins, and solitude, a fond- 
ness for Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton, for Greek and Scandinavian 
poetry, and for odes to abstractions, along with other evidences of 
romantic leanings that are of unusual interest when they occur in 
verse written between 1705 and 1745 by a professor of poetry at 
Oxford. Warton's devotion to Milton (whose minor poems he 
thought he had brought to Pope's attention 2) was, like that of his 
sons, unusual. He wrote three odes modelled on Allegro and Pense- 
roso and one in the meter of the translation from Horace, an invoca- 
tion to a water-nymph which recalls Comus, besides four pieces in a 
blank verse that owes something to Paradise Lost. Here is a sample 
of his octosyllabics : 

^ "Alluding to the well-known allegory of Sin and Death, in the second Book of 
Paradise Lost" (Mason's note, Works, 1811, i. 59), 
^ See above, p. 115, n. 2. 



462 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

O Gentle, feather-footed Sleep, 

In drowsy Dews my Temples steep . . . 

O leave thy Bed of balmy Flow'rs, 

And waken all thy dewy Pow'rs, 

And wafted on the silent Wing, 

The Dreams, thy little People bring! 

Let sobbing Grief, and midnight Feast, 

Comus, and loudly-laughing Jest, 

Never near my Couch appear, 

Nor whistling Whirlwinds wound my Ear . . . 

But whispering Show'rs from off the Eaves, 

Softly dripping on the Leaves. ^ 

Joseph Warton, the older and less gifted son of Thomas Warton, 
was for many years principal of Winchester College, where he en- 
couraged the poetical efforts of his pupil, William Lisle Bowles. He 
is best known by his rambling, two-volume Essay on the Genius and 
Writings of Pope (1756-82), the first important attempt to point out 
the deficiencies of pseudo-classic poetry, and therefore one of the 
more noteworthy critical documents of the eighteenth century. 
Milton is mentioned, quoted from, or discussed on almost every 
page. Warton intended to publish his first poems. Odes on Various 
Subjects, with those of his schoolmate Collins, but the plan failed 
and the two volumes of odes appeared separately in the same month, 
December, 1746. Warton was a dull, uninspired Collins, yet his odes 
reached a second edition the next year, while his friend's far more 
distinguished work fell flat. In his preface Warton attacks didactic 
verse and asserts that imagination and invention are the "chief 
faculties" of a poet.^ Seven of his eighteen odes are modelled on 
Allegro or Penseroso.^ The most Miltonic is the tetrameter Ode to 
Fancy, which is much like the pieces we have been examining; but 
the Ode to Health, though influenced in only four of the seven stanzas, 
shows a more interesting adaptation of the Miltonic formula : 

O Whether with laborious clowns 

In meads and woods thou lov'st to dwell, 

In noisy merchant-crouded towns, 

Or in the temperate Brachman's cell. . . . 

O lovely queen of mirth and ease. . . . 

To aid a languid wretch repair, 
Let pale-ey'd Grief thy presence fly, 

1 Ode to Sleep. ^ See above, p. 435. 

^ Wooll's Memoirs (1806) contains four not included in the 1746 volume, which in 
turn has four that are not in Wooll. For Warton's other Miltonic pieces, see pp. 243-4 
above and 561, 566, below. 



L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 463 

The restless demon gloomy Care, 

And meagre Melancholy die; 

Drive to some lonely rock the giant Pain, 

And bind him howling with a triple chain! 

O come, restore my aking sight. 

In the brief Ode to Music the movement of Allegro is happily caught, 

Queen of every moving measure, 
Sweetest source of purest pleasure. 
Music ! why thy powers employ 
Only for the sons of Joy? 

but there is no further resemblance, nor are any of Warton's other 
poems in tetrameter, except his Temple of Love, influenced by Milton 
other than in the verbal borrowings which are characteristic of all his 
work. 

The younger Thomas Warton was high priest of the eighteenth- 
century Milton cult. Others may have imitated the master more 
closely and in more poems, and a few may have admired him as 
deeply, but none were so saturated with his work and none followed 
him so constantly ^and so variously. The very slavishness of Mason's 
imitations shows them to have been external, things that any one 
might have done ; whereas only close familiarity with a poet would 
lead one to borrow steadily from him, as Warton did from Milton, 
now a word, now a phrase, now a meter, now an idea or perhaps a bit 
of structure. Warton is also distinguished as being much the best 
poet of the men who followed Milton closely. His devotion seems to 
have been lifelong. Starting as it probably did under his father's di- 
rection in boyhood, it caused him to employ in his earliest piece, writ- 
ten when he was seventeen, the verse of Paradise Lost and something 
of the plan of Penseroso; it brought four Miltonic borrowings into the 
first eight lines of his second poem, led him to write a monody similar 
to Lycidas, one ode closely modelled on Allegro and two in which the 
resemblance is less striking, two translations in Milton's unrimed 
Horatian stanza, and nine Miltonic sonnets, besides keeping him 
busy up to the end of his life editing the 1645 volume. For this last 
work, a learned compilation from which all subsequent editors have 
quarried, particularly for its parallel passages, he must have been 
gathering material during many years. ^ First published in 1785, it 
did not appear in its final form till 1791, after Warton's death. 

Such a devotion as this, lasting from childhood to old age, pro- 

1 Mant, in his edition of Warton (Oxford, 1802, vol. i, p. xxviii), speaks of "a copy 
of Fenton's edition of Milton's smaller Poems, which was in his [Warton's] possession 
in 1745, his 17th year, and abounds in MS. notes and references" made about that time. 



464 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

duces a remarkable familiarity with a writer. Its effect upon War- 
ton's poetry is seen most clearly in Miltonic words and phrases, of 
which he uses a larger proportion than does any other English poet, 
which indeed make of some passages in his poems little else than 
Miltonic mosaics.^ As most of these borrowings are from the 1645 
volume, it would appear that Warton was more familiar with the 
minor poems and probably preferred them to Paradise Lost. How 
pervasive, and often how unexpected and probably unconscious, was 
the influence of these shorter pieces is shown in his blank-verse 
Pleasures of Melancholy; for scattered through its lines are phrases 
and bits of structure from Milton's octosyllabics which, when put 
together, make a fairly complete piece of the Penseroso type: 

O come then, Melancholy, queen of thought! 
O come with saintly look, and steadfast step ... 
Where ever to the curfeu's solemn sound 
List'ning thou sitt'st. . . . 
But never let Euphrosyne beguile 
With toys of wanton mirth my fixed mind. . . . 
Tho' 'mid her train the dimpled Hebe. . . . 
Yet are these joys that Melancholy gives. 
Than all her witless revels happier far. ... 
Then ever, beauteous Contemplation, hail! . . . 
Hail, queen divine! whom, as tradition tells, 
Once in his evening walk a Druid found. 

The taper'd choir, at the late hour of pray'r, 
Oft let me tread, while to th' according voice 
The many-sounding organ peals on high. 
The clear slow-dittied chaunt, or varied hymn, 
Till all my soul is bath'd in ecstasies, 
And lapp'd in Paradise.^ 

Fond as Warton was of the octosyllabic measure, he modelled but 
one of his poems, the Ode on the Approach of Summer, upon Milton's 
tetrameters. But in this ode he did what was characteristic of him- 
self and often of his age, though a feat that seems impossible to us, — 
he wrote a very close imitation (of Allegro in this case) and an at- 
tractive poem. Unfortunately, even an extended quotation from a 
work some fourteen pages long must be given up largely to isolated 
lines which show the Miltonic structure of the ode but give little idea 
of its charm : 

^ Cf. Appendix A, below. 

2 Lines 279-307, 196-201. Furthermore, lines 209, 211-225, ^^e clearly based on 
Penseroso, 76, 97-120. In the passages quoted above we have the "come," the personi- 
fications, the manner, a sort of "hence," the train, ending, birth, some of the occupa- 
tions, and a number of verbal borrowings. 



L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 465 

Hence, iron-scepter'd Winter, haste 

To bleak Siberian waste! 
Haste to thy polar solitude; 

Mid cataracts of ice, 
Whose torrents dumb are stretch'd in fragments rude. . . . 
But come thou rose-cheek'd cherub mild, 
Sweetest Summer! haste thee here, 
Once more to crown the gladden'd year. 
Thee April blithe, as long of yore, 
Bermudas' lawns he frolick'd o'er . . . 
Thee, as he skim'd with pinions fleet, 
He found an infant, smiling sweet. . . . 
Haste thee, nymph! and hand in hand. 
With thee lead a buxom band ; 
Bring fantastic-footed J03', 
With Sport, that yellow-tressed boy: 
Leisure, that through the balmy sky 
Chases a crimson butterfly. . . . 
But when the Sun, at noon-tide hour, 
Sits throned in his highest tow'r; 
Me, heart-rejoicing Goddess, lead 
To the tann'd haycock in the mead. . . . 
But ever against restless heat. 
Bear me to the rock-arch'd seat. 
O'er whose dim mouth an ivy'd oak 
Hangs nodding from the low-brow'd rock. . . . 
Or bear me to yon antique wood, 
Dim temple of sage Solitude! . . . 
Yet still the sultry noon t'appease, 
Some more romantic scene might please. . . . 
But when mild Morn in saffron stole 
First issues from her eastern goal. 
Let not my due feet fail to climb 
Some breezy summit's brow sublime. . . . 
But when life's busier scene is o'er. 
And Age shall give the tresses hoar, 
I'd fly soft Luxury's marble dome. 
And make an humble thatch my home. 

Although this is the only poem of Warton's that follows Allegro or 
Penseroso closely, the tone, content, or phrasing of the others con- 
stantly recall Milton, as in these lines: 

Oft upon the twilight plain. 
Circled with thy shadowy train, 
While the dove at distance coo'd, 
Have I met thee. Solitude! 
Then was loneliness to me 
Best and true society. 



466 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

The tufted pines, whose umbrage tall 
Darkens the long-deserted hall: 
The veteran beech, that on the plain 
CoUects at eve the playful train: 
The cot that smokes with early fire. 
The low-roof 'd fane's embosom'd spire! ^ 

Warton's chief merits lie in his descriptions of the more quiet, 
obvious beauties of English landscape and rural life. He has many- 
charming poems of the meditative-descriptive type, in the spirit as 
well as in the meter, form, and diction of Allegro and Penseroso. He 
also catches admirably the romantic, pensive glamour of ruined 
abbeys and castles, and the pomp and daring of the days of chivalry. 
Here, of course, he is much influenced by Gray and Spenser, though, 
in view of his great admiration for the latter and of his two volumes 
of Observations on the Faerie Queene, it is surprising to note how Httle 
Cohn Clout affected his verse. Even Gray is more in evidence; while, 
as compared vnth Milton, Spenser touched the form, meter, diction, 
and content of Warton's work but slightly.^ The reason is that al- 
ready suggested : the meter and form of Milton's minor poems were 
adapted to Warton's needs, their tone suited his ear, and their sub- 
ject-matter, particularly in the octosyllabics, was of the kind that he 
naturally chose himself. 

Warton had an engaging personality and is still an attractive 
figure, though his importance has waned sadly in the last hundred 
and thirty years. In his time he was a man of note, — a learned 
antiquary, a scholarly editor, an important poet, professor of poetry 
at Oxford, and laureate. Besides editing Milton's early pieces, 
Theocritus, and a volume of Latin and Greek inscriptions, and writ- 
ing his Observations on the Faerie Queene, he worked for many years 
at his monumental but incomplete History of English Poetry. He 
was a man of wide and curious information, which appears in all his 
works and adds greatly to their value. In his medieval learning, his 
few genuinely attractive poems, and his passion for Gothic archi- 
tecture, early English literature, and other things deemed romantic 
at a time when few shared his enthusiasm, lies his significance. Yet 
with many the figure that his name calls first to mind is not the 
learned romanticist of our text-books, but the burly poet playing 
pranks with the pupils of his dignified brother, or issuing in soiled 

^ Ode IV, Solitude at an Inn, i-6; Ode V, Sent to a Friend, 13-18. 

^ "The effect of his medieval researches," as W. P. Ker well says {Camh. Hist. Eng. 
Lit., English ed., x. 239), "was not to make him an imitator of the Middle Ages, but 
to give him a wider range in modern poetry. Study of the Middle Ages implied free- 
dom from many common literary prejudices." 



I 



L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 467 

gown from some resort of the Oxford watermen to follow the lure of 
a drum. 

The influence of the Wartons, Mason, Collins, and particularly of 
Gray was very strong from 1745 to 1800. Although ridiculed and 
parodied by men of the Johnson- Goldsmith school, who still vigor- 
ously maintained the entire pseudo-classic tradition, they were the 
guides of such writers as were turning towards newer things. Eight- 
eenth-century poets usually followed the fashion, and these men 
said what the fashion was to be. They admired, praised, and imi- 
tated Allegro and Penseroso, and their friends, admirers, and imita- 
tors did the same. As a result, the poems that had lain "in a sort of 
obscurity " for nearly a century sprang into a popularity which they 
have never since attained. They became the vogue, and for a time 
shared with the Miltonic sonnet the distinction of furnishing the 
models most generally used for occasional verse. They enjoyed to 
the full the flattering ridicule of parody, — as, for instance, in the 
Garrulous Man, a Parody upon V Allegro (1777), in Barron Field's 
La Ciriegia, an Austere Imitation of V Allegro (1807), and Horace 
Twiss's Fashion, a Paraphrase of U Allegro (1814). An Ode to Horror, 
"in the Allegoric, Descriptive, Alliterative, Epithetical, Fantastic, 
Hyperbolical, and Diabolical Style of our modern Ode-wrights, and 
Monody-mongers" (1751),^ which employs the meter and structure 
of the companion pieces and invokes the "mild Miltonic maid," is 
directed principally at the Wartons. Colman and Lloyd's joint 
odes To Obscurity and To Oblivion (1759) laugh at the work of Gray 
and Mason; Mason and others are burlesqued in five poems of the 
same type in the Probationary Odes (1785), and fun is made of 
Gray's work in the Anti- Jacobin (1798).^ All these pieces belong to 
the Allegro-Penseroso type, and therefore ridicule the extensive use 
which the poets in question made of Milton's octosyllabics. 

For us the most significant of such burlesques are those contained 
in two widely-read satires of the day. The second book of Church- 
ill's Ghost (1762) begins with an attack upon the custom of invo- 
cation in poetry, which, however, since it is the fashion, the satirist 
himself follows: 

Truth, Goddess of celestial birth, 
But little lov'd, or known on earth . , . 
Where Fraud and Falshood scorn thy sway . . . 
With Love and Virtue by thy side . . . 
Amongst the Children of Content . . . 

* Student, ii. 313-15. 

* See Bibl. II below, under the dates given. 



468 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Hither, O hither, condescend, 
Eternal Truth, thy steps to bend. . . . 
But come not with that easy mien 
By which you won the lively Dean . . . 
But come in sacred vesture clad, 
Solemnly dull, and truly sad! 
Far from thy seemly Matron train 
Be Idiot Mirth, and Laughter vain! . . . 
Of Noblest City Parents born. 
Whom Wealth and Dignities adorn, 
Who still one constant tenor keep, 
Not quite awake, nor quite asleep, 
With Thee let formal Dulness come, 
And deep Attention, ever dumb. 

The other satire, called The Birth of Fashion, a Specimen of a 
Modern Ode, forms the third "letter" in Christopher Anstey's amus- 
ing New Bath Guide (1766). The closeness with which Anstey follows 
Allegro indicates that he realized how much the "modern ode" de- 
rived from Milton : 

Come then. Nymph of various Mien. . . . 
MoRiA Thee, in Times of Yore, 
To the motley Proteus bore; 
He, in Bishop's Robes array'd, 
Went one Night to Masquerade, 
Where thy simple Mother stray'd. 
She was clad like harmless Quaker. . . . 
There mid Dress of various Hue, 
Crimson, yellow, green, and blue. 
All on Furbelows and Laces, 
Slipt into her chaste Embraces. . . . 
Bring, O bring thy Essence Pot, 
Amber, Musk, and Bergamot. . . . 
Come, but don't forget the Gloves. ... 
Then, O sweet Goddess, bring with Thee 
Thy boon Attendant Gaiety, 
Laughter, Freedom, Mirth, and Ease, 
And all the smiling Deities. 

Such parodies must have been more numerous than has been 
realized; for in 1780 the Critical Review spoke of one "apparently 
designed, as a hundred others have been before it, to ridicule ode- 
writing," ^ and this hundred does not include the twenty-three 
"Probationary Odes" (supposed to have been submitted in compe- 
tition for the laureateship) which make fun of the would-be lyricists 
of the day. One of these burlesques has the lines, 

' xlix. 396. 



L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 469 

Geography, terraqueous maid, 
Descend from globes to statesmen's aid! 
Again to heedless crowds unfold 
Truths unheard, tho' not untold: 
Come, and once more unlock this vasty world.^ 

In the same volume a "Table of Instructions for the Rev. Thomas 
Warton," the successful candidate, suggests that, as invocations 
"have of late years been considered by the Muses as mere cards of 
compliment, and of course have been but rarely accepted, you must 
not waste more than twenty hnes in invoking the Nine, nor repeat 
the word Hail more than fifteen times at farthest." ^ As early as 
1758 the Critical Review had remarked that the "mixture of new- 
fangled and unintelligible epithets, wild thoughts, and affected 
phrases" which it found in the anonymous Fancy, an Irregular Ode 
"must mean (if they mean any thing) to ridicule the fashionable 
species of poetry, called ode- writing " ; ^ and in 1797, after condemn- 
ing the "prettyism," "tinsel," and " imbecillity " of a volume of 
contemporary English Lyricks, it observed, "Gray and Collins . . . 
have produced such tribes of imitators, that we are weary of this 
species of composition. . . . Avaunt such frippery!" * Meanwhile, in 
1782 the Monthly Review had declared: "No species of composition 
appears to be more at enmity with common sense than the modern 
ode. The Pindars of the present hour seem to think that the personi- 
fication of a few abstract ideas, no matter whether they are brought 
together in any order or connection, completes the whole of what is 
expected from them." ^ Apparently, conternporary readers saw quite 
as clearly as we do to-day the failure of the lyric efforts of the later 
eighteenth century. 

To follow the subsequent course of the Allegro-Penseroso move- 
ment in the same detail as we have studied its beginnings would be 
tiresome and profitless. The poems affected do not differ materially 
from those we have examined, and from a literary standpoint they 
are usually not so good. The rise and fall of the fad — for fad it 
became — can be traced in the number of pieces that show the influ- 
ence of the companion pieces. From 1740 to 1750 I have found 41 ; 
from 1750 to 1760, 46; 1760 to 1770, 71; 1770 to 1780, 68; 1780 to 
1790, 75; 1790 to 1800, 61 ; 1800 to 1810, 40; 1810 to 1820, 6. That 
is, their popularity was at its height from 1760 to 1790, declined 
rapidly after 1800, and by 18 10 had practically disappeared. These 

1 Ode IX (by Richard Tickell?), in Probationary Odes for the Laurealship (1785), 39. 

2 lb. 130. * New arrangement, xxi. 340. 

3 V. 162. ^ Lxvii. 387. 



470 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

figures, it should be understood, are conservative; they by no means 
include every piece that shows any influence from Allegro or Pen- 
seroso; if they did, if they took into account every production that 
belongs in a general way to the type or that borrows a few expres- 
sions from Milton's octosyllabics, they would embrace, along with 
many miscellaneous poems, nearly every ode to an abstraction pub- 
lished in the latter half of the century. In the work of Mrs. Mary 
Robinson, for example, — the "Perdita" who still smiles on us from 
the canvases of Reynolds, Romney, and Gainsborough with the 
charm that brought the Prince of Wales to her feet, — ■ nearly one 
hundred and forty pages are devoted to odes on subjects like The 
Muse, Delia Crusca, Genius, Reflection, Envy, Health, Vanity, 
Melancholy, Despair, Beauty, Eloquence, the Moon, Meditation, 
Valour, Night, Hope, Humanity, Winter, Peace, Apathy.^ Nearly 
all of these odes are affected by the companion pieces in one way or 
another, but only a third of them seem to me close enough to Milton 
to belong in the appended bibhography. 

Likewise, in other eighteenth-century poems almost every con- 
ceivable kind and degree of influence from the octosyllabics may be 
found. Often it is Hmited to a phrase or two; frequently only the 
first few lines or a single stanza or a short passage are Miltonic; 
perhaps the influence extends throughout the piece but is confined to 
the meter and cadence. Many poems do not employ tetrameter at all 
but show their indebtedness in the "hence" or "come," the personi- 
fication, the train, the occupations, or other points. There are some 
doublets and even some triplets, and a few pieces are as slavish 
copies as Mason's II Bellicoso and // Pacifico. So great, indeed, was 
the vogue of Milton's octosyllabics that traces of their influence 
crept into the most unexpected places. A dramatic pastoral of 
Robert Lloyd's, for instance, which shows no other connection with 
Milton, has the couplet, 

Hither haste, and bring along 

Merry Tale and jocund Song." 

A humorous blank- verse piece. Upon a Birmingham Halpenny, begins, 

Hence! false, designing cheat, from garret vile, 
Or murky cellar sprung! ^ 

In another unrimed production we come suddenly on the Lines, 

Come then, O Night! and with thee, by the hand, 
Thy younger sister. Melancholy, bring, 
In sable vestment clad; 

' Poetical Works (1806), i. 81-218. ' Gent. Mag., xxvii. 325 (1757). 

^ Arcadia (1761), act i. 



L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 47 1 

and a page farther on, 

Then let me still with Melancholy live, 
And haunt the hermit Contemplation's cell.' 

There is no other suggestion of Milton's octosyllabics in the poems, 
or, until we read these lines near the end, in the eight pages that 
Sneyd Davies addressed to the Rev. Timothy Thomas in 1744: 

But chiefly thou, divine Philosophy, 

Shed thy blest Influence; with thy Train appear 

Of Graces mild; far be the Stoick boast, 

The Cynick's Snarl, and churlish Pedantry. 

Bright Visitant, if not too high my Wish, 

Come in the lovely Dress you wore, a Guest 

At Plato'' s Table; or at Tusculum. . . . 

See crouching Insolence, Spleen and Revenge 

Before thy shining Taper disappear.* 

The most distinguished piece of blank verse into which the Allegro 
structure penetrated is the Pleasures of Imagination, in the tenth 
line of which Akenside invokes "Indulgent Fancy" and, as her 
companion, 

Let Fiction come, upon her vagrant wings 
Wafting ten thousand colours through the air. . . . 
Wilt thou, eternal Harmony, descend 
And join this festive train? for with thee comes . . . 
Majestic Truth; and where Truth deigns to come, 
Her sister Liberty will not be far. 

Sonnets likewise were affected, for the first of those "written in the 
Highlands of Scotland" by Hugh Downman begins, "Hence Sick- 
ness . . . where the Night-raven sings." Even Greek tragedy was not 
exempt: in a chorus of his translation of Aeschylus Robert Potter 
introduces the lines, 

Thou, son of Maia, come, and with thee lead 
Success, that crowns the daring deed;^ 

1 Mrs. Hampden P)^e, Philanthe (written 1758; in Poems, 2d ed., 1772, pp. 42, 43). 

2 John Whaley, Collection oj Original Poems ( 1 745) , 334-5. Cf . also Crabbe's Borough, 
beginning of letter xi; J. G. Cooper's Power of Harmony, beginning of the first and second 
books; Christopher Smart's Hop-Garden, i. 257-69; William Woty's Tankard of Porter, 
near the end, and Chimney-Corner, 49-50; Robert Fergusson's Good Eating (Works, 
1851, p. 215); S. J. Pratt's Landscapes in Verse {Sympathy, etc., 1807, pp. 81, 117); 
James Hurdis's Elmer and Ophelia (Poems, 1790, pp. 57-9) ; Henry Moore's Private Life 
(1795?), 15-17. 

^ The Choephorae (Tragedies of Aeschylus, Norwich, 1777, p. 365). Potter's Ode to 
Sympathy is slightly, and his Ode to Health decidedly, influenced by Allegro (see Poetical 
Amusements near Bath, 1781, iv. 112-23). His Farewell Hynine to the Country, in the 
manner of Spenser's Epitbalamion (1749, reprinted in Bell's Classical Arrangement, 1790, 
xi. 105-19), contains at least four borrowings from Milton, and his Kymber (1759) is a 
close imitation of Lycidas. 



472 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

and Andrew Becket writes in one of his choruses, 

O haste along; 
Come, O come and bring with thee, 
Truth and bright Humanity.^ 

These lines and many others like them may owe nothing directly 
to Milton. For without doubt some authors merely followed the 
latest mode in versifying without being conscious of its origin, and so 
familiar did the "hence," the "come," the train of personifications, 
and the tripping octosyllabics become that their source was probably 
overlooked or forgotten by many who knew and loved the 1645 
volume. 

It has often been thought that Penseroso had not a little to do with 
the rise of the "graveyard school" of poetry that flourished in the 
eighteenth century, a natural assumption that is not borne out by 
the facts. The most important and most popular representatives of 
the literature of melancholy, Young's Night Thoughts (1742-6), 
Blair's Grave (1743), and James Hervey's prose Meditations among 
the Tombs (1746), were quite uninfluenced hy Penseroso. Moreover, 
the vogue of this literature began before that of Milton's 1645 vol- 
ume, and few of the poems that imitated the octosyllabics are of the 
graveyard variety or show any preference for the less lively of the 
companion pieces. Milton's poem, furthermore, is not // Melan- 
cholio, but II Penseroso, the praise of a retired, studious life such as 
the poet led in his happy years at Horton. The love of gloom which 
characterized much of the Hterature of the middle and latter part of 
the eighteenth century belongs with the fondness for the Middle 
Ages, for ruins, and for wild nature. It was a part of the romantic 
and rather sentimental tendency of the time ; it is alien to the mood 
of Penseroso, and would have been quite the same if Milton's poem 
had never been written.^ 

Among the more important writers who used the Allegro-Penseroso 
form and who used it most frequently are Thomas Blacklock, the 
blind versifier whose kind letter sent Burns to Edinburgh instead of 
to Jamaica; John Langhorne, the translator of Plutarch and of some 
of Milton's Italian and Latin poems; Tobias Smollett and Charles 
Brockden Brown, the novelists ; Mrs. Barbauld, the poetess and writer 
for children; William Richardson, the Shakespearean scholar; and 
Henry Kirke White, the pathetic, overrated consumptive upon 
whom Southey tried to confer immortality. There is no reason for 

^ Socrates, "a drama on the model of the ancient Greek tragedy" (1806, reprinted in 
Dramatic and Prose Miscellanies, ed. W. Beattie, 1838, i. 272, cf. 209). 

^ See my Literature of Melancholy, 1909 (Modern Language Notes, xxiv. 226-7). 



L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 473 

pausing on the work of these men and women, but there are sur- 
vivals of the Allegro-Penseroso movement in a few later poets that 
have unusual interest. 

Coleridge, who, when uninspired seems to belong wholly to the 
eighteenth century, has three pieces of the type we have been study- 
ing. Two of them, Music, and Inside the Coach, — 

Slumbrous God of half-shut eye! 
Who lovest with limbs supine to lie, — 

are humorous and are affected for only a few lines, but the third is 
an out-and-out imitation : 

Hence! thou fiend of gloomy sway, 
That lov'st on withering blast to ride 
O'er fond Illusion's air-built pride. 

Sullen Spirit ! Hence! Away! 

Where Avarice lurks in sordid cell, 
Or mad Ambition builds the dream, 
Or Pleasure plots th' unholy scheme 

There with Guilt and Folly dwell! . . . 

Then haste thee. Nymph of balmy gales! 
Thy poet's prayer, sweet May! attend! . . . 

Peace, that lists the woodlark's strains. 
Health, that breathes divinest treasures. 
Laughing Hours, and Social Pleasures 

Wait my friend in Cambria's plains. ^ 

Coleridge employed the Allegro-Penseroso form in 1792, when it 
was still popular; Wordsworth dropped into it for a few lines some 
years after its vogue had passed. In an irregular ode To Enterprise 
that he composed in 1820, the personifications, the parentage, the 
circumstances attending the birth and early training of the abstrac- 
tion, all suggest Milton, as do a borrowing from Comus and a refer- 
ence to Penseroso; yet, as the similarities are Umited to thirty of the 
one hundred and sixty-one lines of the poem, they may be accidental: 

Bold Spirit ! who art free to rove 
Among the starry courts of Jove, 
And oft in splendour dost appear . . . 
Where Mortals call thee Enterprise. 

' To Disappointment {Poetical Works, ed. E. H. Coleridge, Oxford, 1912, i. 34). 
Southey's irregular odes, To Horror and To Contemplation (written 1 791-2, Poetical 
Works, 1837, ii. 129-34), are somewhat Miltonic in style, and the latter has a few dis- 
tinct borrowings: "high-tufted trees" (cf. Allegro, 78), "slow-moving on the surges 
hoar Meet with deep hollow roar" (cf. Penseroso, 75-6), "Far from all the haunts of 
men" (cf. Comus, 388, and Pen., 81). This last line is in the midst of a passage (begin- 
ning "But sweeter 'tis to wander") probably suggested by Penseroso, 139-47. 



474 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Daughter of Hope! her favourite Child, 

Whom she to young Ambition bore. . . . 

Thee winged Fancy took, and nursed 

On broad Euphrates' palmy shore. . . . 

She wrapped thee in a panther's skin . . . 

And thou (if rightly I rehearse 

What wondering Shepherds told in verse) 

From rocky fortress in mid air 

(The food which pleased thee best to win) 

Did'st oft the flame-eyed Eagle scare. ^ 

One hardly expects to find a source for Shelley's shorter poems. 
They are too spontaneous and ethereal, too much the children of the 
wind and the cloud, the rainbow and the sun, to be fathered upon 
any mortal. Yet one of his lyrics. To Jane, the Invitation, written in 
1822, only a few weeks before he was drowned, comes strikingly near 
to the Allegro-Penseroso type: 

Best and brightest, come away! 
Fairer far than this fair Day, 
Which, like thee to those in sorrow. 
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow. ... 
The brightest hour of unborn Spring, 
Through the winter wandering. 
Found, it seems, the halcyon Morn 
To hoar February born. . . . 
Reflection, you may come to-morrow. 
Sit by the fireside with Sorrow. — 
You with the unpaid bill. Despair, — 
You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care. . . . 
Expectation too, be off! . . . 
Hope, in pity mock not Woe. . . . 
Radiant Sister of the Day, 
Awake! arise! and come away! 

Shelley would not consciously have adopted a hackneyed eighteenth- 
century verse-form, or have taken directly from one of Milton's 
poems "machinery" which, as he must have known, had previously 
been borrowed by hundreds of poetasters; yet here we have the 
meter and movement, the "come," the "hence," the personified 
abstractions (together with the parentage and the circumstances 
attending the finding of one of them) , and a clear verbal borrowing.^ 
There is nothing strange in his employing the meter and movement 

^ Compare the first two lines of the quotation with the first line of Comus (spoken, it 
should be observed, by the attendant "spirit"), "Before the starry threshold of Jove's 
court." The reference to Penseroso is at line 145. I have taken the last five lines from 
the first edition because of the Miltonic ring of the parenthetical clauses, particularly 
the first, which recalls Allegro, 17. These clauses were afterwards omitted or changed. 

2 Compare the third and fourth lines with Allegro, 45-6. For Shelley's other borrow- 
ings from Milton's minor poems, see pp. 228-31 above and 567 below. 



L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 475 

of Allegro, for he had probably borrowed them before in his Lines 
written among the Euganean Hills (18 18)/ much as in other poems 
he had used the Spenserian stanza and the sonnet form. Nor can the 
other similarities in To Jane be brushed aside as mere coincidences, 
for the empty personified abstractions and the parentage and birth 
of Morning are not the sort of thing one expects in Shelley. Perhaps 
he was led into them unconsciously by the "come away" and the 
verbal borrowing of his beginning. 

Keats wrote eleven poems in iambic tetrameter, most of which 
catch, at least for a time, the lilt of Milton's octosyllabics. They 
differ, however, in that almost every line lacks the initial unaccented 
syllable. Two quotations, the first from Fancy, the second from the 
Song of Four Fairies, will serve to show the metrical similarity : 

Sit thee there, and send abroad, 
With a mind self-overaw'd, 
Fancy, high-commission'd: — send her! 
She has vassals to attend her: 
She will bring, in spite of frost, 
Beauties that the earth hath lost; 
She will bring thee, all together, 
All delights of summer weather, 

Happy, happy glowing fire! 
Dazzling bowers of soft retire. 
Ever let my nourish'd wing, 
Like a bat's, still wandering, 
Faintless fan your fiery spaces, 
Spirit sole in deadly places. 
In unhaunted roar and blaze, 
Open eyes that never daze.^ 

It is hazardous to base a claim of influence on meter and cadence 
alone, and in Fancy there is, indeed, more; there is the sitting by the 
fireside at night, the harvesting, the early lark, the personified ab- 
straction who will bring various things, and the ending, 
And such joys as these she'll bring. 

Moreover, Keats could compose tetrameter that has none of the 
Allegro lilt, and it must be remembered that he said of Milton, 

Thy spirit never slumbers, 
But roUs about our ears 
For ever and for ever! ^ 

^ Besides To Jane, the Invitation, and its earlier form The Pine Forest of the Cascine 
near Pisa, he also wrote (in 1822) two other octosyllabics with the Miltonic lilt, With a 
Guitar, to Jane, and Lines written in the Bay of Lcrici. 

2 Keats's octosyllabic To Fanny, first published in 1909 by the Bibliophile Society of 
Boston, Massachusetts, has much the same lilt. 

* On a Lock of Milton's Hair, 3-5. 



476 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Perhaps the music of Allegro was rolling about his ears when he 
composed his octosyllabics. It seems to have been when he wrote 
his recently-discovered sonnet On Peace. "O Peace I" he writes, 

Joyful I hail thy presence; and I hail 
The sweet companions that await on thee, 

one of whom is "the sweet mountain nymph . . . Liberty." ^ 

The delightful octosyllabic Solitude (182 1) of John Clare also 
"suggests" Milton (as Mr. de Selincourt says of Fancy), but the 
resemblance is much slighter than in Keats's poem. The similarity 
to Penseroso of William Motherwell's Melancholye (1832) may be 
merely accidental, notwithstanding the "hence," the "come," the 
manner, and the personifications; yet it is pleasant to think of these 
lines, with their fresh fragrance, as the last and one of the loveliest 
flowers which the rather thorny octosyllabic movement put forth : ^ 

Adieu! al vaine delightes 
Of calm and moonshine nightes. . . . 
Adieu! the fragrant smel 
Of flowres in boskye dell; 
And all the merrie notes 
That tril from smal birdes' throates. . . . 
And welcome gloomy Nighte, 
When not one star is scene. . . . 

Come with me, Melancholye, 
We'U live like eremites holie, 
In some deepe uncouthe wild 
Where sunbeame never smylde: 
Come with me, pale of hue, 

To some lone silent spot, 
Where blossom never grewe, 

Which man hath quyte forgot. 

Come, with thy thought -filled eye, 
That notes no passer by. 
And drouping solemne heade, 
Where phansyes strange are bred. 

The Allegro-Penseroso vogue belonged, not only in time but in 
kind, to the second half of the eighteenth century. When the fresh 
breath of the true lyric began to sweep again across the fields of 
English verse, the odes to abstractions withered away and died. 
They had long since fulfilled their function and no one mourned their 
passing. The later eighteenth century was a period of many petty 

* Note the personification, the invocation, the train, and the borrowing from 
Allegro, 36. 

2 Coventry Patmore's V Allegro (1878) has practically no resemblance to Milton's 
except in title. 



L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 477 

and rather silly versifiers who really expressed themselves in the 
trite stupidities of their pseudo-lyrics. They wanted to be "bards" 
but did not know how, and Milton's octosyllabics furnished a way 
out of the difficulty by affording a mould in which their banalities 
could quickly and easily be turned into something that looked Uke 
poetry, something they thought was poetry. A ludicrous picture of 
the way some of their effusions were composed is drawn in Horace 
Walpole's account of the Batheaston vase. 

Near Bath is erected a new Parnassus, composed of three laurels, a 
myrtle-tree, a weeping-willow, and a view of the Avon, which has been 
new christened Helicon. . . . They hold a Parnassus fair every Thursday, 
give out rhymes and themes, and all the flux of quality at Bath contend 
for the prizes. A Roman vase dressed with pink ribbons and myrtles re- 
ceives the poetry, which is drawn out every festival; six judges of these 
Olympic games retire and select the brightest compositions, which the 
respective successful acknowledge, kneel to Mrs. Calliope Miller, kiss her 
fair hand, and are crowned by it with myrtle, with — I don't know what. 
You may think this is fiction, or exaggeration. Be dumb, unbelievers! 
The collection is printed, published. — Yes, on my faith! ^ 

The collection to which Walpole referred, Poetical Amusements at a 
Villa near Bath, eventually consisted of four volumes (1775-81), one 
of which actually reached a third edition. They are filled with octo- 
syllabics and personified abstractions, with " avaunt's " and " come's " 
and other bits of the Allegro-Penseroso recipe for producing a poem 
at short notice on any subject.^ It was persons who belonged to 
literary circles like this and indited poetical effusions upon the 
slightest provocation, that gave Milton's octosyllabics much of their 
vogue. But obviously such popularity could not last. It passed 
away soon after the passing of the century, whereas the influence of 
Paradise Lost and of the sonnets remains. 

Yet Allegro and Penseroso were of considerable assistance to 
Parnell, Dyer, Collins, Gray, the Wartons, and other true if minor 
poets, men who had something to say and ability to say it but who 
were timid and inexperienced. To such men, who were feeling to- 
wards the lyric, Milton's shorter poems furnished an inspiration 
and a guide. If the guide could not take them all the way into the 
land of wonder, mystery, and rapture, it did lead them as far as they 
were ready to go. 

1 Letter to H. S. Conway and the Countess of Ailesbury, Jan. 15, 1775. 

2 One of the poems (see below, Bibl. II, 177S, Burgess) could hardly be closer to 
Allegro than it is. 



CHAPTER XIX 

MILTON AND THE SONNET 

WITH A HISTORY OF THE SONNET IN THE EIGHTEENTH 
AND EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURIES 

In taking up the study of the eighteenth-century sonnet we enter 
terra incognita. A few scholastic explorers, to be sure, have viewed 
the region from afar, but even had theirs been the Pisgah vision we 
should have needed others to spy out the land. Such, however, there 
have not been, principally, it would seem, because those who have 
scanned the country from the neighboring summits have reported no 
Canaan flowing with milk and honey, but a small and desert waste. 
And so it is that the rich fields of the Elizabethan sonnet with their 
monotonously fantastic vegetation have been repeatedly trav- 
ersed, but not a few of the deserts, quiet valleys, and sunny mead- 
ows of this demesne — a far wider one than has been suspected — 
have these many years scarcely felt the print of a human foot. The 
last four decades of the eighteenth century are probably the most 
neglected period of English Uterature, and within this period the 
greatest neglect has befallen the sonnet. 

Before we can understand the eighteenth-century sonnet we must 
know what preceded it, that is, what antecedent influences were at 
work upon it. These influences were, in the main, three — the Eliza- 
bethan, the Miltonic, and the Italian sonnets. The quatorzain of 
the Elizabethans is, as a rule, made up of three elegiac quatrains 
followed by a couplet, riming ahabcdcdejefgg; but this, the 
Shakespearean form, is by no means the only one. Spenser's Amo- 
retti have the linked rimes ababbcbccdcdee; and some 
writers even dispense at times with the couplet-ending, perhaps the 
most universal and distinctive feature of the Elizabethan sonnet.^ 
Yet few even approximate the strict Italian arrangement and very 
rarely does any one achieve it. This matter of rime-scheme is not 
the slight, external afTair that it is commonly regarded, for it often 
determines the structure and modifies the idea of the sonnet. Each 
quatrain, for example, is usually more or less separated from what 
follows by a pause and a slight change in thought; and the final 
couplet is likely to be isolated from the rest of the poem, because 

1 Sidney has twenty-five quatorzains that do not end with a couplet, and, like Wyatt, 
he uses the Petrarchan arrangement of the octave more than any other. 

478 



THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 479 

ordinarily it is preceded by a strong pause and is devoted to an epi- 
grammatic turn or a sententious summing up of the whole subject. 
As to contents, the outstanding feature of the Elizabethan quator- 
zain is the presence of exaggerations and conceits. Samuel Daniel 
asks Delia to 

Yield Cytherea's son those arcs of love; 
Bequeath the heavens the stars that I adore, 
And to the Orient do thy pearls remove; 1 

and Sidney queries, 

When Nature made her chief work, Stella's eyes. 
In colour black why wrapt she beams so bright? * 

To be effective, conceits must be novel. Unfortunately, those in 
Elizabethan sonnets are repeated until they become mannerisms : the 
lady's eyes are always stars, her breast always ice or marble, her 
teeth always pearls, and we are usually asked to believe that her 
beauties will live eternally in her lover's verse. The unoriginal char- 
acter of these figures and hyperboles (the greater part of which were 
borrowed from the French or the Italian) has no bearing on the pres- 
ent discussion, for it was not realized by eighteenth-century writers. 
They must, however, have felt the lack of originality manifest in the 
subjects chosen, — one is tempted to say the subject, for the poems 
recall the daisy oracle, ''He loves me, loves me not, he loves me, 
loves me not." A number of quatorzains, to be sure, are on sleep, on 
the moon, on abstract or religious themes, and there are some in com- 
mendation of books or addressed to friends or patrons; but in com- 
parison with the poems on love the others are few. 

Although the Elizabethan sonnets furnished the key with which 
Shakespeare is said to have unlocked his heart, and although in his 
day they concerned themselves mainly with the heart, they are not, 
as a rule, moving. On the whole, they belong to the poetry of inge- 
nuity rather than of feeling. The greatest of them, of course, Shake- 
speare's, Sidney 's, and such noble ones as that attributed to Sylvester, 
are for us the most tender of love -poems, the most perfect expres- 
sions of feeling. But we are accustomed to Elizabethan literature; 
its vocabulary, its ornate style, its point of view, are so familiar to 
us that we can ignore the conceits and see only the beauty. Even 
to-day it is not so with the untrained reader, — with the average 
undergraduate, for instance; and it was not so with the cultivated in 
Pope's and Johnson's time, when lyric beauty fell on rather dull ears 
and far-fetched figures and other exaggerations met with little favor. 

^ Delia, xix. 2-4. * Astrophel and Stella, vii. 1-2. 



480 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

In style the Elizabethan sonnet is marked by elaboration and 
adornment, by rich sweetness, grace, delicate loveliness and charm, 
and a copious, slow-moving flow of pleasing words. Shakespeare's 
work has also a stateliness and a splendor rarely met with in the 
quatorzains of his contemporaries; yet, when contrasted with the 
sonnets of Milton and Wordsworth, Shakespeare's are seen to have 
a sweeter, richer, more graceful beauty which stamps them as in- 
dubitably Elizabethan. 

Such, in general, was the English sonnet up to 1630. Of course the 
description here given does not fit all Elizabethan quatorzains; nor 
is it necessary that it should, for, so far as influence upon the eight- 
eenth century is concerned, little counts except the work of Sidney, 
Spenser, and Shakespeare, and only the best that even these men 
wrote. It is very difficult for us of the twentieth century to realize 
the ignorance and indifference of our ancestors towards earlier Eng- 
lish literature. Striking instances of how little they knew or cared to 
know may be found in the absurd mistakes that writers of the stand- 
ing of Pope and Warburton made in their editions of Shakespeare. 
Theobald and Steevens were among the few men of the time who 
were familiar with Elizabethan prose and poetry; the rest gloried in 
their ignorance and sneered at what they held to be stupid and 
profitless grubbing. Of Steevens and Dr. Grey (the editor of Hudi- 
bras) John Pinkerton wrote, ''Both are fellow labourers in the con- 
genial mines of dulness; where no man of taste or science ever dirtied 
himself." ^ In 1764 a critic in a leading English review had never 
heard of Spenser's Epithalamium, and nine years later the Gentle- 
man's Magazine printed Herrick's famous Corinna's Going a Maying 
as an unknown poem by an unknown author.^ But most astonishing 
of all is an opinion expressed in the Monthly Review of 1797, "Milton 
. . . was, we believe, the first Englishman that was induced to at- 
tempt the sonnet in the language of our island." ^ 

The principal reason for such gross ignorance was that eighteenth- 
century readers did not like most of the early literature they knew. 
It seemed to them Gothic and uncouth, it did not square with the 
rules of Aristotle and Boileau, it lacked the elegance and refinement 
introduced by Waller and perfected by Pope. Strange as it may 
appear, even the sonnets of the greatest Elizabethan did not meet 
with their approval. As late as 1793 Steevens omitted from his 
edition of Shakespeare all the sonnets and other poems because, as 
he was good enough to tell us, "the strongest act of Parliament that 

* Robert Heron [i. e., Pinkerton], Letters of Literature (1785), 315. 

' Crit. Rev., xvii. 79; Gent. Mag., xliii. 243. ^ Enlarged ed., xxiv. 17. 



ELIZABETHAN SONNETS DISLIKED 481 

could be framed, would fail to compel readers into their service." ^ 
About all Malone can say in their favor in 1790 is that he thinks 
"they have been somewhat under-rated," ^ and Boswell is very 
cautious in his praise even in 182 1, when Tennyson and Browning 
were schoolboys.' Inasmuch as these editors of the poet might be 
expected to have an undue partiahty for his works, their remarks 
indicate an astounding attitude on the part of the public at large. 
No pubhsher, moreover, would have left out the poems if there had 
been any demand for them. How little the demand was may be sur- 
mised from Nathan Drake's comment in his popular Literary Hours 
(1798). "The sonnets of Shakspeare," he writes, "are buried be- 
neath a load of obscurity and quaintness; nor does there issue a 
single ray of light to quicken, or to warm the heavy mass. ... his 
last Editor has, I think, acted with greater judgment, in forbearing 
to obtrude such crude efforts upon the public eye: for where is the 
utility of propagating compositions which no one can endure to 
read?" And so with Spenser. "It is scarcely necessary to say," 
Drake remarks, "that he has complete^ failed. In his long series of 
sonnets, the critic will recognise many of the trifling conceits of the 
Italian, but find little to recompense the trouble of research."'* As 
late as 1803 George Henderson wrote that the Ehzabethan quator- 
zains included in his sonnet anthology were inserted not because of 
their excellence, for "few" of them "could be found agreeable to 
modern taste," but "to illustrate the progressive refinement of this 
species of versification. . . . Until the time of Drummond," he con- 
tinues, "we can advance slender claim to any degree of elegance in 
this species of versification ... in too many instances . . . our early 
Sonnets abound with sentiments so hyperboHcally uttered, and re- 
semblances so extravagantly and uncouthly drawn, as must neces- 
sarily render them disgusting to any but a rude or uncultivated 
taste." 5 

1 "Advertisement," p. vii. For Steevens's dislike of the sonnet form, see p. 521 
below. 

" See his edition, x. 296. 

^ Boswell's Malone (1821), xx. 222. "The poetical merits of Shakspeare's Sonnets," 
he writes, "are now, I believe, almost universally acknowledged. . . . Whatever may be the 
reader's decision, he has here an opportunity ... of judging for himself." The italics are 
mine. 

* Third ed. (1804), i. 107-8. Yet for Milton's sonnets Drake has high praise. 

* Petrarca, pp. vii, viii, xxi, xxii. It is by no means a mere coincidence that the first 
person in the eighteenth century to care for Shakespeare's sonnets seems to have been 
William Blake, the first poet of the century with a real gift for song. In 1806 B. H. 
Malkin {A Father's Memoirs of his Child, p. xxxiv) mentioned "Shakspeare's Venus 
and Adonis, Tarquin and Lucrece, and his Sonnets " as "poems, now little read, [which] 
were favourite studies of Mr. Blake's early days." 



482 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Negative evidence quite as important as these outspoken criti- 
cisms is to be found in the striking absence of references to Shake- 
speare's quatorzains in the literature of the period, even in the many 
poems and essays that laud his plays. Miss Seward, for example, in 
her numerous discussions of sonnets, apparently mentions those of 
Shakespeare and Spenser but once, and then only to speak of their 
conceits, their ''quaintness" and "quibbling." Yet she thought 
Shakespeare's dramas the highest productions of human genius.^ If 
Englishmen of the eighteenth century held so poor an opinion of the 
poems of the greatest writer of their past, is it any wonder that they 
neither knew nor cared to know those of his contemporaries? 

The sonnets of Milton differ in almost every respect from those of 
the Elizabethans. Most of them are stamped with the Puritanism 
of their author, than which nothing can be more alien to the sonnet 
sequences of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Instead of 
showing the light grace, the richness and ornate beauty, of the earlier 
type, they are distinguished by vigor, dignity, and exaltation. They 
are more sonorous and direct, they have what Wordsworth termed 
"republican austerity," ^ they are restrained and classic; in a word, 
they are Miltonic, for they are marked by the characteristics that 
distinguish Milton the man and the poet. Yet, notwithstanding the 
greatness of many lines, they lack the grace, loveliness, and sheer 
beauty of Shakespeare's quatorzains, of Comus, Lycidas, and the 
octosyllabics, a deficiency which was strongly but not unpleasantly 
felt by the eighteenth century. Miss Seward, a profound admirer of 
the poems, praises their "hardnesses," their "energetic plainness," 
and compares them to "the pointed and craggy rock, the grace of 
which is its roughness." ^ The elegance of the miore intimate ones, 
the suggestion of Horace in that to Lawrence and the first to 
Cyriack Skinner, and the somewhat stately grace of the one to Lawes 
and that to " a virtuous young lady " seem to have left no trace upon 
the eighteenth-century quatorzain. 

The changes which Milton made in subject-matter have received 
final phrasing from the pen of Landor : 

He caught the sonnet from the dainty hand 
Of Love, who cried to lose it; and he gave 
The notes to Glory.* 

1 Letters (1811), v. 159, 188-9. Henry White's remarks on the sonnet, in the Gentle- 
man's Magazine for 1786 (Ivi. mo), mention neither Shakespeare nor Spenser. 

2 Letter to Landor, April 20, 1822. 

^ Letters, i. 201, ii. 257-8. Sir Egerton Brydges {Censura Literaria, 1808, vi. 415) 
says that people spoke of the "harsh and bald deformities" of Milton's sonnets. 
* To Lamartine, in Last Fruit. 



THE MILTONIC SONNET 483 

Of his "Petrarchian stanzas" ^ in English, only the one to the night- 
ingale deals with love, and that but briefly. Half of them are ad- 
dressed to friends, an important point as regards influence; the rest 
are devoted to an attack on the Presbyterians, an appeal for pro- 
tection, the defense of a pamphlet, the author's birthday, his bhnd- 
ness, his dead wife, and the Piemontese martyrs. It is this widening 
and ennobhng of its theme that constitutes Milton's greatest ser\dce 
to the sonnet. Obviously, with subjects like these the elaborate 
trifling, the conceits and exaggerations, of the Elizabethans could 
have no place. Instead we find seriousness and directness, simplicity 
and truth. The poems plunge immediately into the subject, eleven 
of them beginning with vocatives, a feature borrowed by many later 
writers.^ They impress us not with their author's cleverness but with 
his sincerity; they do not savor of art for art's sake, of something 
written to while away an idle hour, to fill out a sequence, or to follow 
a fad. Each, we feel, was called forth by some actual event or strong 
emotion without which it would not have been written. Hence, 
though spread over a period of twenty-five or thirty years, they are 
but nineteen in all. Those on the writer's bhndness and his dead 
wife reveal a deep pathos ; while the one entitled On the New Forcers 
of Conscience and the second on Tetrachordon flame with the indig- 
nation which in the nobler cause of the Piemontese martyrs glows 
like a deep fire. In several, indeed, intensity is a distinguishing fea- 
ture. 

Structurally Milton's sonnets mark a return to the Petrarchan 
form. Aside from three of those in Italian, — which from the point 
of view of influence are almost negligible, — only one concludes with 
a couplet, the rest having a legitimate rime-scheme throughout.^ 
Oddly enough, the two respects in which Milton departs from the 
structure of his Italian models are among the very few in which his 
English predecessors almost always followed it. Thus, in most 
Elizabethan sonnets the pauses at the end of the first quatrain and 
the octave are preserved, whereas in six of Milton's English sonnets 
the first of these pauses is omitted and in nine the second. More 
than this, in six cases, instead of a pause at the end of the octave, 

' Milton uses this phrase regarding his sonnet, On his being Arrived at the Age of 
Twenty-three, in a letter quoted in Masson's Life (1881), i. 325. 

2 One other has a vocative after the first word. In seven cases, as usually with Mil- 
ton's followers, the vocative is a proper name. 

' That is, they rime in the octave abb a abb a, and in the sestet cdcdc d, or cde 
c d e, or c d e d c e, or c d d c d c, or c d c e e d, or c d d c e e. Milton has one tailed 
sonnet (an Italian form of twenty lines) , On the New Forcers of Conscience, the 13th 
and 14th lines of which do not form a couplet but the 19th and 20th do. 



484 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Milton has a run-over line. Such lines occur so frequently in all 
parts of all his sonnets as to iurnish another difference between his 
work and that of his predecessors. Still further, the Italians and 
Elizabethans — though the latter are less rigorous in this particular 
— avoided strong pauses within the line, a principle which Milton 
disregarded entirely. According to the punctuation of Wright's edi- 
tion, the nineteen English sonnets have twenty-eight strong pauses 
(indicated by semicolons, colons, periods, or interrogation-points) 
within the line, eleven of which mark the ends of sentences. In 
other words, the prosody of Milton's sonnets is much like that of his 
blank verse. With this prosody goes, not unnaturally, that inversion 
of the normal word-order which is a marked feature of Paradise Lost} 
It is important to bear in mind that Milton ended one of his Eng- 
lish sonnets, the famous one to Cromwell, with a couplet. Any later 
sonnet which has this form cannot, therefore, be said to follow the 
Elizabethans rather than Milton. The difficulties of the Petrarchan 
form loomed so large in the eighteenth century, a period of little 
metrical facility, that many of the poets who regarded Milton's us- 
age as authoritative were glad to avail themselves of his sanction of 
the couplet-ending. We read in the Gentleman^ s Magazine for 1786: 
"Of Milton's English sonnets, only that to Oliver Cromwell ends 
with a couplet; but that single instance is a sufficient precedent. 
However, in three out of his five Italian ones, the two concluding 
lines rhime to each other." ^ Many persons regarded the Petrarchan 
rime-scheme as the ideal and made an effort to conform to it,^ their 

^ These innovations are probably undesirable in a poem so brief, and therefore so 
highly finished, as the sonnet. 

^ Ivi. 1 1 10. The article is by the Rev. Henry White, a cousin of Miss Seward, whose 
ideas it represents and who, though an uncompromising devotee of the Miltonic sonnet 
and of what she regarded as the legitimate form, ended approximately half of her own 
effusions with couplets. "Little elegies, consisting of four stanzas and a couplet," added 
White, "are no more sonnets than they are epic poems." 

^ Charlotte Smith wrote in the preface to her "Elegiac Sonnets" (1784), most of 
which are Shakespearean or nearly so, " The little poems which are here called Sonnets, 
have, I believe, no very just claim to that title." She held that the Petrarchan struc- 
ture was too difficult for any but poets of "uncommon powers" to handle in English. 
Capel Lofft urged Kirke White to use the legitimate form and not to call quatorzains 
sonnets (see White's Remains, ii. 57). The Critical Review held in 1786 (Ixi. 467) that, 
so far as rimes were concerned, Mrs. Smith's poems were not sonnets at all, and in 1793 
(new arr. , ix. 383) agreed with William Kendall that only poems written " according to 
the strict rules of that species of versification ' ' were entitled to be called sonnets. Charles 
Lloyd, the friend of Lamb and Coleridge, thought the same (see his Nugae Canorae, 1819, 
pp. 167-74). For the decided opinions of Miss Seward and her circle, see the preceding 
note, and pp. 500-502 below. George Henderson quoted Miss Seward's utterances with 
approval in his Petrarca (1803, pp. xxvii, xxix, xxx), as the Monthly Review (enl. ed., 
xxix. 361-4) had previously done. There were many, on the other hand, who heartily 
disliked the Petrarchan form. 



THE ITALIAN SONNET 485 

irregularities being not intentional variations but attempts at the 
legitimate scheme which fell wide of the mark. The order of their 
rimes is as near Petrarch's as writers with a feeble sense of form, 
little metrical skill, less inspiration, and almost no literary fastidious- 
ness would be likely to get. 

The influence from Italy has been left to the last, because for the 
present purposes Italian sonnets may be regarded as Elizabethan 
quatorzains with the Miltonic rime-scheme.^ This does not imply 
that they are distinguishable from the work of Shakespeare and his 
contemporaries merely by their language and their arrangement of 
rimes; it means that so far as their influence goes this is the case, 
that it is hardly possible by internal evidence alone to decide whether 
the style, subject-matter, or method of treatment of a poem is de- 
rived from the Elizabethans or the Italians. Fortunately there is 
no need of making this distinction, for English poets of the eight- 
eenth century knew little about Italian sonnets and did not like 
what they knew. To be sure, Laura, "Vaucluse's vale," and the 
poet who celebrated them are frequently mentioned; but, as the 
Gentleman's Magazine observed, "the strains of Petrarch" were 
"more talked of than imitated." ^ From Miss Seward's letters and 
poems, for example, one would surmise that the Swan of Lichfield 
often floated on the waters of the Arno ; yet she wrote of Petrarch's 
sonnets, "Judging of them by the translations and imitations of 
them, which I have seen, they want . . . pathetic simplicity." ^ That 
is, from her slight knowledge of them she had an unfavorable im- 
pression. Coleridge seems to have voiced the general ignorance and 
the general prejudice when, though he "did not understand a word 
of Italian" and knew Petrarch "only by bald translations of some 
half-dozen of his Sonnets," he wrote, "I have never yet been able to 
discover either sense, nature, or pOetic fancy in Petrarch's poems; 
they appear to me all one cold glitter of heavy conceits and meta- 
physical abstractions." ^ 

Translations of about twenty Italian sonnets were printed be- 
tween 1690 and 1776; and between 1777 and 1790, outside of mag- 
azines and of two books which apparently no one read, about thirty 

1 J. S. Smart, in his valuable Sonnets of Milton (Glasgow, 1921, pp. 19-34), points 
out that there was considerable freedom as to the rime-scheme in Italian sonnets, that 
a number of Elizabethan quatorzains approach the less rigid Italian arrangements, and 
that run-over lines, internal pauses, and disregard of regular pauses characterize the 
work of Giovanni della Casa (d. 1556), a copy of whose sonnets Milton owned. 

2 Ivi. 334 (1786). 

^ Letters, v. 58; cf. i. 261, ii. 304, and Sonnets, nos. 25, 64, 86. 
* "Introduction to the Sonnets," Poems (2d ed., 1797), 71. 



486 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

seem to have appeared.^ When it is remembered that over one hun- 
dred and thirty persons were composing quatorzains at this time, 
and that a single writer sometimes produced between fifty and a 
hundred, it will be seen how ridiculously few the translations were. 
There were more in the last decade of the century, but the number 
was still small. I know of some sixty-five; but, as the dates of many 
sonnets are uncertain, the number outside of magazines may be be- 
tween one and two hundred. Furthermore, eighteenth-century 
bards who translated Italian sonnets usually did only one or two, and 
apparently worked those up for the occasion in order to make an im- 
pression upon their readers, for the translating rarely left any mark 
on the author's original productions.^ The truth is, the Enghshmen 
of the time missed in Petrarch and his countrymen the things for 
which they cared most, and they cared little for many of the quali- 
ties which the ItaHan poems possess. The latter seem to have af- 
fected the English quatorzain principally by strengthening the in- 
fluence of Milton towards the legitimate form. 

One feature of the Italian sonnet which seems not to have been 
understood in England until the nineteenth century is the bipartite 
structure, or the turn in thought which should come at the beginning 
of the sestet. Such a turn, though frequent in Elizabethan quator- 
zains, is apparently accidental. Any short, non-stanzaic poem is 
likely to fall into two parts, • — Goethe's "Ueber alien Gipfeln," for 
example, where the first six lines describe the peace of nature, the 
last two the peace to which man looks forward. There is, accordingly, 
no warrant for concluding that, because Coleridge devoted the first 
eight of his lines To the Autumnal Moon to describing the moon and 

1 I know of but seventeen before 1777, but I did not record those that appeared in 
magazines after 1742. The two books referred to — which I have been unable to see 
and to which later writers do not refer — are an anonymous Sonnets and Odes (1777) 
and W. Lipscomb's Poems (Oxford, 1784). 

^ A surprising feature of these translations is that they are rarely from Dante, and 
that many of them are from little-known Italian poets of the sixteenth, seventeenth, 
and eighteenth centuries. Lofft's Laura (1813-14) contains translations of sonnets — 
many of them previously published — by 1 18 Italian writers. A Dublin dramatist and 
slave of the pen, William Preston, who died of overwork in 1807, included twenty- 
seven dull, stilted sonnets in the two volumes of Poetical Works which he published in 
1793. Five of these are translations from Petrarch, and almost all the rest deal with the 
poet's love for a young lady whose death several of them lament. None have the 
couplet-ending, and all but two use the legitimate octave. Prefixed to the sonnets is a 
preface (to which Coleridge took \aolent exceptions, see Poetical Works, Globe ed., 
pp. 542-3), that does not mention the quatorzains of Shakespeare, Milton, or any 
eighteenth-century writers, but contains a strong defence of Petrarch. It seems clear, 
therefore, that Preston drew his inspiration mainly from the great Italian poet. I am 
indebted to the Boston Athenaeum for the use of the copy which the author presented, 
with a glowing tribute, to George Washington. 



I 



BIPARTITE STRUCTURE OF THE SONNET 487 

the last six to the thoughts it suggested, he therefore consciously 
heeded the rules of the legitimate sonnet. If there is a turn in the 
thought, it is most likely, apart from any rule, to come at the end 
of the second quatrain, particularly if there are no run-over lines 
and if the rime-sequence of the sestet differs from that of the octave.^ 
That the frequent observance of the strict bipartite structure in 
the Elizabethan and the eighteenth-century quatorzains is to be 
regarded either as chance or as an unconscious conformity to an 
esthetic law, is shown by the numerous instances in which the rule is 
disregarded even by writers who in the main observe it, and by the 
absence of any mention of such a requirement in the definitions and 
discussions of the sonnet which abound in the eighteenth century.^ 
In some of the Elizabethan quatorzains, and in one or two of Mil- 
ton's, such turn as there is seems to come before the last two lines; 
but in most of Milton's either there is no turn at all or it falls earlier 
or later than it should, sometimes in the middle of a line.' In these 
particulars the eighteenth century often followed him. 

But the bipartite structure was not the only aspect of the sonnet 
regarding which the eighteenth century was ignorant. The first six 
editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (17 71-18 24) explained that 
the sonnet consisted of "two stanzas ... of four verses each; and 
two of three; the eight first verses being all in three rhimes." Cham- 
bers's Cyclopaedia said the same in 1728 and 1752, except that it 
corrected the three rimes in the octave to two and added, "It is to 
end with some pretty, ingenious thought: the close must be par- 
ticularly beautiful, or the sonnet is naught."^ Nothing, it should be 
observed, is said here regarding the bipartite structure or the order 
of the rimes. It was apparently these articles that led Miss Seward 
astray and caused her irregular quatorzains to be accepted as legiti- 

1 This is explained more fully on pp. 533-4 below. Mr. Smart maintains {Sonnets of 
Milton, 34-8) that in many of the sonnets of Petrarch or of other Italians there is no 
turn, and that it was first mentioned as a requisite of the form in 1880. But Words- 
worth discussed it in 1833 (see p. 532 below). 

2 Miss Seward wrote in 1795, "The legitimate sonnet generally consists of one 
thought, regularly pursued to the close" {Letters, iv. 144-5). In a quatorzain of Capel 
Lofft's, urging Kirke White to use the legitimate form (see White's Remains, ii. 57), 
the eighth line is run over! 

3 Milton's failure to fit his form to his thought has seldom been criticized; but surely 
little is gained by avoiding the couplet-ending if the last two lines of the poem stand 
apart from the others in sense, as they do in seven of Milton's sonnets. Similarly, there 
may be no important reason whj' the thought should not move forward without a 
break; but, if it does, the rimes and their relation to one another ought not to change 
suddenly at the beginning of the ninth line. On the other hand, if the poem falls into 
two parts the rimes should change where the thought does. 

* Edition of 1752; the 1728 edition stops at "beautiful." 



488 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

mate. She disputed the remark regarding the close (which the 
Monthly Review repeated in 1795 *), but otherwise the encyclopaedia 
articles seem to have gone unquestioned. Still more surprising is 
Coleridge's misconception of the sonnet, which will be noticed later. 
But strangest of all is the reproof addressed by Capel Lofft — who 
edited an anthology of sonnets and translated many from the Italian 
— to Kirke White on account of the irregularity of the latter's 
fourteen-line poems. This stickler for regularity couched his objec- 
tions in the form of a quatorzain, presumably a model, in which the 
rimes have the astonishing arrangement abbaababcddcee.^ 

The eighteenth-century sonnet, as has been said, is terra incognita. 
There are few subjects that have been so inadequately treated by 
distinguished writers and few about which so much misinformation 
is available. The received opinion seems to be that "from Milton to 
William Lisle Bowles . . . few sonnets of any kind and hardly one of 
note can be found." ^ Charles Tomlinson, in his book on the subject, 
says that "Milton's sonnets . . . made but little impression on the 
course of English literature ; for in the long interval between Milton 
and Cowper . . . the sonnet was neglected." He mentions Gray, 
Mason, and Warton, to be sure, but he regards Bowles as "the re- 
viver of the sonnet in recent literature." ■* One critic of fine taste 
declares that in the eighteenth century "very few essayed the sonnet, 
and still fewer . . . succeeded in writing sonnets of worth"; and an- 
other asserts that "of the best" between Milton and Wordsworth 
"it can only be said . . . that they are 'not bad.' " ^ Mr. Gosse is re- 
sponsible for the extraordinary remark, which with slight modifica- 
tions has often been repeated, that Walsh is "the author of the only 
sonnet written in English between Milton's, in 1658, and Warton's, 
about 1750." ^ It is true that, if we omit "Warton's," if we say 
1740 instead of 1750 and "published" instead of "written," — 
which may be what Mr. Gosse meant, — the remark is not particu- 
larly misleading; for, even including translators, only thirteen per- 
sons are known to have used the form between 1660 and 1740.^ All 

* Enlarged ed., xvi. 463. For Miss Seward's views, see below, p. 500. 
^ White's Remains, ii. 57. 

' Norman Hepple, Lyrical Forms in English (Camb., 191 1), 97-8. Cf. Dublin Rev., 
xxvii. 423 (1876). 

* The Sonnet, its Origin, Structure, etc. (1874), 79. 

' L. E. hocliwood, Sonnets Selected, etc. (Boston, 1916), p. xiii; J. A. Noble, TheSon- 
net in England (1893), 37. 

' Ward's English Poets, iii. 7. Cf. the books on romanticism by H. A. Beers and 
W. L. Phelps (pp. 53 and 44 respectively), and John Dennis's Age of Pope, p. 247. 

^ I have come upon only five or six between 1660 and 1700. Matthew Stevenson's 
Poems, or a Miscellany of Sonnets, Satyrs, etc. (1673), I know only by title. Samuel 



THE FIRST EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SONNETS 489 

their productions are on either the Elizabethan or the Italian model, 
and none of them seem to have had any connection with those 
that followed. 

The course of the sonnet between 1740 and 1750 resembles the 
progress of a strange infectious disease which appears here and 
there, no one knows how or why, and spreads at first slowly and then 
with increasing rapidity. The earliest appearance of the new form 
seems to have been in the London Magazine for July, i'] 2,^, A Sonnet, 
in Imitation of Milton'' s Sonnets. This anonymous piece is typical of 
most of the eighteenth-century quatorzains that succeeded it, — 
simple, direct, and dignified in style, noble in sentiment, Petrarch- 
esque in the arrangement of its rimes, addressed to a person (with 
whose name, in the vocative, it begins), and yet clearly uninspired.^ 

Apparently the second example of the new type was that ad- 
dressed by Phihp Yorke, second earl of Hardwicke, to his brother 
Charles, June 8, 1741. It seems to have been first printed in 1806.^ 
As it is earlier by a year than Gray's well-known sonnet, and has 
hitherto escaped the notice of writers on the subject, it may well be 
quoted here: 

O Charles! replete with learning's various store; 

Howe'er attentive to th' historic page, 

The poet's lay, or philosophic lore, 

Thy thoughts from these high studies disengage. 

Woodford's Paraphrase upon the Canticles (1679) includes in an appendix nine quator- 
zains, four of which are translations. Philip Ayres's Lyric Poems, made in Imitation of 
the Italians (1687), contains thirty sonnets, of which twenty-four deal with love, eleven 
are translations, seven have the Shakespearean and two the Petrarchan arrangement; 
the preface mentions Spenser, Sidney, Fanshaw, and Milton, " the success of all which," 
adds Ayres, "cannot much be boasted of." Jane Barker's Poetical Recreations (1688) 
has one poem in seven couplets that is not called a sonnet, and one in four quatrains 
that is. In Charles Cotton's Poems on Several Occasions (1689) there are four sonnets 
on four young ladies and one translation (all riming abbacddceefggf), besides a 
number of fourteen-line octosyllabics called sonnets; all are on love. William Walsh's 
sonnet on death (in his Letters and Poems, 1692) , has a Spenserian octave, with ddc e ec 
in the sestet. In 1715 John Hughes spoke of the sormet as "a Species of Poetry so 
entirely disus'd, that it seems to be scarce known among us at this time. . . . Milton . . . 
is, I think, the last who has given us any Example of them in our own Language" 
("Remarks," etc., in his Spenser, vol. i. pp. cviii, ex). For sonnets published after 
1700, see Bibl. IV, below. 

^ An anonymous stanzaic poem of forty-two lines, To Aristus, in Imitation of a 
Sonnet of Milton (Steele's Poetical Miscellanies, 1714, pp. 1 16-19), which adapts, with 
omissions and some changes, Milton's sonnets To a Virtuous Young Lady, To Mr. 
Lawrence, and the first to Cyriack Skinner, is of interest because of its early date. There 
may be some importance in two sonnets by "Signior Nenci, an Italian poet now in 
London," which were published and translated in the London Magazine for 1740 and 
1 741 (ix. 555-6, X. 47). 

' Thomas Park's enlargement of Walpole's Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors 
(1806), iv. 400. 



490 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Let Horace rest and Locke, and quick repair 
To Wrest, that ancient honourable seat! 
In its wide garden breathe a purer air. 
And pass the fleeting hours in converse sweet. 
From this short respite shall thy mind renew 
(Whose spirit by the midnight lamp decays) 
Her native strength, its labours to pursue, 
And in thy bloom of age outstrip the praise. 
Each studious vigil thou shalt pleas'd review. 
When honours crown thy well-spent early days. 

Notwithstanding its irregular rime-scheme, the general Miltonic 
character of this poem is as unmistakable as is its specific debt to the 
first of the sonnets to Cyriack Skinner.^ If there were any doubt 
about the matter, it would be dispelled by the two similar quator- 
zains, frankly entitled "in Imitation of Milton," which Charles 
Yorke (to whom the one quoted above is addressed) wrote to his 
brothers in 1743, and by his explanation in a postscript to one of 
them, "Colonel is to be pronounced as a word of three syllables on 
the authority of Milton. ... A scripture allusion, as that of the 
Leviathan, is in Milton's manner, as you will readily recollect." "^ 
All three poems are addressed to persons, all begin with vocatives, 
all are direct, dignified, serious, and somewhat stiff, and none of them 
deal with love; all make free use of run-over lines and internal 
pauses, and all are irregular in rime-scheme. 

Gray's admiration for Dante and Petrarch was probably respon- 
sible for his use of the sonnet to lament the death of his friend Rich- 
ard West, as well as for the particular rime-scheme he employed.' 
The absence of run-over lines in his poem, the preservation of the 
pauses at the end of the first and second quatrains and of the turn at 
the beginning of the sestet, also seem to point to an Italian model; 

' Compare the fourth and fifth lines given above with Milton's fifth, sixth, and 
seventh: 

To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench 
In mirth that after no repenting draws; 
Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause. 

The general idea of the two sonnets is also the same, — that one works better for having 
some play. 

''■ P. C. Yorke, Lije and Correspondence of Philip Yorke (Camb., 1913), i. 292-3, ii. 
147. 

3 I find that Mr. Gosse {Gray, 60) is of the same opinion. For Gray's knowledge of 
Italian literature and his love of Dante, see Paget Toynbee's Dante in English Literature 
(1909), vol. i, pp. xxxvii, 231-2. Gray had but recently returned from Italy and had 
"run over" Petrarch only a few months before composing his poem (letter to West, 
May 8, 1742). I do not remember finding the rime-scheme ababababcdcdcd in 
preceding English sonnets. It is common in the early Italian poets, and is also that of 
Dante's 29th, and of the 13th, 39th, and 42d of Petrarch's Morte. 



I 



THE SONNET: GRAY — STILLINGFLEET 49 1 

yet, as Gray certainly knew some Elizabethan quartorzains and 
presumably had read a good many/ the richness of his opening lines 
and their embroidery of the idea they express may be due to Shake- 
speare, Spenser, or their contemporaries. On the other hand, there 
may be some influence from Milton, whom Gray strongly admired 
and by whom his other pieces were affected. This seems the more 
probable because the poem was written about a person and was 
called forth by a definite occasion, because it contains three verbal 
borrowings from Paradise Lost,- and because certain lines exhibit a 
simple sincerity and depth of feeling which even the stilted phrase- 
ology of the eighteenth century cannot conceal. Yet the main in- 
fluence was certainly Italian. The poem was not published, or ap- 
parently even shown to friends, until 1775, after Gray's death; and 
therefore it had no influence upon the revival of the sonnet. In struc- 
ture and language it is quite different from any of the quartorzains 
that succeeded it. 

The sonnets that seem to come next in chronological order met 
with a fate singularly like that of their predecessors: remaining for 
many years unpublished, they appear to have been practically un- 
known and so to have had no traceable influence. These pieces were 
the work of Benjamin Stillingfleet, the litterateur who is best known 
for having given rise to the term "blue-stocking." H. J. Todd, who 
examined the manuscripts, tells us that one of the sonnets was dated 
1746.' As Stillingfleet edited Milton's poems and arranged an ora- 
torio from Paradise Lost, one might expect him to have been influ- 
enced by the elder poet. On this point his biographer leaves no 
doubt, for he writes: "The study of Milton and the preparations for 
an edition of his works, led Mr. Stillingfleet to an imitation of his 
style; and soon after this period, copying the example of his favourite 
bard, he addressed to his beloved friends and companions of the 
common room, a Series of Sonnets." * But even without these facts 
there could be little question as to the "truly Miltonick" ^ character 
of poems like the following: 

Grandson to that good man, who bravely dared 
Withstand a Monarch's will, when crowds around 
Of noble serving men stoop'd to the ground 

1 See his Observations on English Metre, in Works (ed. Mitford), v. 249-50. 

2 "Smileing mornings," "amorous descant," "attire" (for a covering of the fields); 
cf. P. L., V. 168, iv. 603, vii. 501. 

I 3 jn his edition of Milton (1801), v. 446. Internal evidence gives approximately 
jthe same date. 

* Literary Life and Select Works [by William Coxe], 1811, i. 94. 

5 Todd's Milton, preface. 



492 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Whene'er Corruption's guilty face appear 'd; 
Thou nobly firm, like him, hast ever rear'd 
Thy front sublime; thou, with the giddy found 
Steady and wise, hast kept thyself unbound 
By glittering chains that others have ensnar'd; 
So shall thy virtue due reward obtain. 
While they, like Greeks and Trojans heretofore, 
Fright holy Virtue from her peaceful seat ; 
Destroying each his rival, but to gain 
A phantom Helen; thou shalt her adore, 
Her real, and enjoy in thy retreat. 

Lofty in sentiment and dignified in style as this is, it is not great; but 
in these respects, as well as in dealing not with love but with the 
friend to whom it is addressed, in beginning with a vocative, in using 
run-over lines and internal pauses, in adhering to the Petrarchan 
rime-scheme and the pauses at the end of the first and second quat- 
rains, it is typical of its fellows. The preservation of the pauses may 
be due to Italian or to Elizabethan influences, though in every other 
respect in which Milton differs from his predecessors Stillingfleet 
follows him. 

It is important to bear in mind that none of these sonnets — those 
of the two Yorkes, Gray, and Stillingfleet — were published or 
generally known until many years after they were written. They 
are significant only as showing that the sonnet ferment was working 
and how it was working. As for influence, they had apparently none 
whatever. 

The real father of the eighteenth-century sonnet, "the only be- 
getter" whom his contemporaries knew as such, and accordingly the 
one who may have done much to settle the kind of poem it was to be, 
was Thomas Edwards. In the .second volume of "Dodsley's Mis- 
cellany" (1748), that important collection through which many of 
the new impulses in English poetry found expression, there appeared 
fourteen sonnets, all by Edwards except the first, which was prob- 
ably an imitation of the others.^ Thirty-nine more quatorzains of 
Edwards's were published, but none appeared until ten years later, 
after his death. The qualities that marked the first ones are present 
in all the rest: they are, as their editor described them, "correct, 
simple, not aiming at points or turns, in the phrase and structure 
rather ancient, for the most part of a grave, or even of a melancholy 
cast; formed in short upon the model of the Italians of the good age, 

1 It is an "imitation" from Lope de Vega, by Richard Roderick, the friend of Ed . 
wards and his follower in other literary activities. See the 1782 edition of the "Mi- 
cellany," ii. 336, 324. 



THE SONNET: EDWARDS 493 

and of their Imitators among us, Spenser and Milton." ^ This one 

is typical: 

Harvy, dear Kinsman, who m prime of youth 
(When Passions rule, or proud Ambition's call 
Too oft misleads our heedless steps to fall 
From the fair paths of Virtue, Peace, and Truth,) 
For erring Souls touch'd with a generous ruth, 
Did'st vow thy service to the God of All; 
Anxious to rescue free the captive thrall 
From the old Serpent's deadly poisonous tooth; 
Great is the weight, important is the care, 
Of that high office which thou made'st thy choice; 
Be strong, be faithful therefore to thy best. 
Nor pains, nor pray'ers, nor fair example spare; 
So thou shalt hear at least that chearing voice, 
"Well done, good Servant, enter into rest." 

That this sonnet is formed upon the model of Milton's seems clear 
enough, and not alone because of the obvious similarity in the first 
line, in three of the rime-words, and in the general idea to Milton's 
''Lady, that in the prime of earliest youth." In these respects it is 
unhke most of Edwards's poems; but in tone, style, and structure, 
in beginning with a proper name in the vocative, and in having a 
person as the subject, it is typical of its author, and, save for its lack 
of genius, it is typically Miltonic. There would seem, then, to be 
little doubt that Edwards patterned his sonnets on Milton's. Un- 
fortunately, he himself declared he did not. In a letter to the novelist 
Richardson he said : 

The reading of Spenser's Sonnets was the first occasion of my writing 
that species of little poems, and my first six were written in the same sort 
of stanza as all his and Shakespeare's are. But after that Mr. Wray 
brought me acquainted with the Italian authors ... I wrote in that stanza; 
drawing from the same fountains as Milton drew from; — so that I was 
complimented with having well imitated Milton when I was not ac- 
quainted with his Sonnets. I hope I shall never be ashamed of imitating 
such great originals as Shakespeare, Spenser and Milton, whom to imitate 
with any degree of success is no small praise. But why is my writing of 
sonnets, imitation any more than theirs? At least, it is not imitating 
them, but the same authors whom they imitated. ... I have only to add 
that the impulse was that way; and to borrow an expression of Mr. Pope's, 

I wrote in sonnet, for the numbers came.^ 

* "Advertisement" prefixed to the sixth edition (1758) of Edwards's Canons of 
Criticism, in which fifty of his sonnets are printed. 

" Richardson's Correspondence (ed. A. L. Barbauld, 1804), iii. 91-2, July 18, 1754. 



494 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

At a first reading this is certainly baffling, and yet it may prove to 
be illuminating. It is to be noted that Edwards does not distinguish 
between Shakespearean and Spenserian sonnets, that his published 
work contains none on the Shakespearean and but four on the Spen- 
serian model, and that these four recall the Elizabethan productions 
only in their rime-scheme and in the fact that one of them touches 
on love. The influence of the Italians is equally dubious, for there is 
no trace of it save in the Petrarchan structure and rime-sequence, 
which are used in all but the four Spenserian poems. Clearly Ed- 
wards's memory was at fault, or else some of his sonnets were not 
published. He was a pious, good man, who would not intentionally 
deceive ; but a desire to assert his originality may have affected his 
recollection somewhat, or have caused him to overstate the case, 
particularly if he had been accused of imitating Milton. What makes 
this conjecture the more probable is his friendship with the Yorke 
brothers, whose Miltonic quatorzains, composed in 1741 and 1743, 
he must have known, since he addressed three of his earliest sonnets 
to them and their father, and since Daniel Wray, who ' brought him 
acquainted with the Italian authors,' knew the Yorkes well and 
bantered them on their intimacy with both Edwards and his op- 
ponent Warburton.^ Very likely Mr. Wray explained to Edwards 
the general structure of the legitimate sonnet (saying nothing about 
run-over lines or internal pauses) and read him a few translations 
from the Italian. Thereafter Edwards undoubtedly tried to follow 
the rules that had been given him, but there is no evidence of his 
getting anything else ''from the same fountains as Milton drew 
from." If, then, the character of his sonnets is neither Elizabethan 
nor Italian, and if we attach any significance to his declaration that 
they were not derived from Milton, whence are they? 

Perhaps his concluding sentence will give us a clue, — ''the im- 
pulse was that way." It must be remembered that the continuity of 
sonnet development had been entirely broken. Edwards presum- 
ably knew but few sonnets of any kind, and had only vague and in- 
correct notions of those the Elizabethans and Italians had written. 
More than this, he had neither inherited nor unconsciously assimi- 
lated any preconceptions in the matter. The sonnet was dead. If 

1 The 1 8th sonnet (as numbered in the Canons of Criticism) is addressed to the 
Lord Chancellor himself, the 7th and isth to his sons Philip and Charles Yorke. In 
Nichols's Collection, vi. 106, the i8th is dated 1746 and the 15th 1747; but, as these 
follow neither the Spenserian nor the Shakespearean model, they ought not, according 
to Edwards's letter just quoted, to be his earliest sonnets. Inasmuch as the 7th, that 
to Philip Yorke, is Spenserian and also comes first in the first group printed (in "Dods- 
ley's Miscellany," 1748), it is likely to be the first one he wrote. For Wray's remarks, 
see George Hardinge's Biographical Anecdotes of Daniel Wray (1815), 54. 



THE SONNET: EDWARDS 495 

Edwards chose to revive it he might, and probably would, instinc- 
tively turn it to purposes entirely different from those to which it 
had previously been devoted. An Elizabethan would naturally have 
written as his friends were writing; but since, aside from the Yorkes, 
Edwards's friends were not writing sonnets, he followed his own bent. 
It is all-important to realize that the eighteenth-century sonneteers, 
in their ignorance of what lay on the other side of the deep gulf 
stretching between them and their forefathers, were free to do what- 
ever they chose, and that they naturally did something quite differ- 
ent from what the Elizabethans or the Italians had done. Milton's 
poems, however, were so generally known and liked that their influ- 
ence could hardly be avoided. It was so in Edwards's case. However 
he came to write sonnets, he must have known and admired Milton's 
before composing most of those he published, although some of the 
characteristics which the earher poet first brought into the English 
sonnet Edwards may well have reintroduced independently.^ 

Since, except for the "imitation" in the London Magazine, Ed- 
wards's sonnets were the first of the new type to be published, and 
since those that followed are much like his, it is natural to inquire 
what influence he exerted. "Dodsley's Miscellany" was often re- 
printed, and it is fair to suppose that, among the many hundred 
sonnets published in the latter part of the eighteenth century, a 
number were affected by the considerable body of Edwards's work 
and that some authors owed their initial impulse to it.^ But, as his 

' Thirty-six of Edwards's sonnets — nearly seventy per cent — begin with voca- 
tives, which in sixteen cases are proper names; four others have proper names in the 
vocative later in their first lines. Almost every one of them has to do with some friend 
and is addressed to him. The usual pauses are nearly always observed, but in the 
23d and the 26th there is a run-over line at the end of the first quatrain, and in the 
33d one at the end of the second, the turn coming at the beginning of the tenth line. 
In the fifty-two sonnets there are nineteen internal pauses and 178 lines without final 
punctuation, nearly half of them being very closely connected with the lines that follow. 
These figures seem to point to a structure derived through Mr. Wray from the Italian 
but modified by familiarity with Milton. The subjects, style, and opening lines cer- 
tainly suggest Milton. "Sabrina's flood" is mentioned in the first sonnet, and Milton 
is referred to in the 17th, 32d, and 45th; in the 4Sth, a line and a half are devoted to 
Paradise Lost, the phrase "warbling tunes his Doric lays" is borrowed from Lycidas, 
189, and "Fancie's Child" is applied to "sweet Shakespear," as it is in Allegro. In the 
39th the lines, 

While joUy spring 
In frolic dance leads-up the blooming May, 

are from Milton's sonnet To the Nightingale; and there are also the similarities in the 
30th, quoted above, p. 493. 

2 There is a marked similarity between Edwards's sonnets and the thirty-two that 
Hugh Downman "presented with the first impression of Poems to Thespia" in 1781. 
All of these are addressed to persons and twenty begin with vocatives; internal pauses 
abound, as do run-over lines, which often come at the end of the octave, but the order 



496 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON |B| 

poems closely resemble those of men who wrote independently of 
him, — Stillingfieet's, for example, — it is only by external evidence 
that one can be certain of his influence. Of such evidence there is 
very little; in fact, so rare are references to Edwards in the sonnets 
of the period and in the critical writings upon them that his prestige 
can hardly have been great. ^ Only three persons can be definitely 
shown to have been his followers, and two of these, Susannah High- 
more and Hester Mulso Chapone, belonged to the bevy of ladies who 
fluttered about the novelist Richardson and thus knew Edwards 
personally. The third, Gray's friend and biographer, William Mason, 
is of more consequence. 

Mason's debt to Edwards may be inferred from the title of his 
first sonnet. Sent to a Young Lady with Dodsley^s Miscellanies, and 
from its date, 1748, the year Edwards's poems appeared in these 
same "Miscellanies." His thirteen other quatorzains were written 
at rather wide intervals until the close of the century; yet, singularly 
enough, only two were published before 1797. Ail have the Pe- 
trarchan octave, and but one ends with a couplet; six of the fourteen 
are concerned with the friends to whom they were addressed, two are 
in defence of the English garden, and three are anniversary poems. 
In seriousness, as well as in the absence of conceits, the arrangement 
of rimes, the presence of run-over lines and internal pauses, and the 
frequent omission of the pauses at the end of the first and second 
quatrains, they are clearly on the Miltonic model.^ To be sure. 
Mason, Hke Edwards, may not have intended to follow Milton; but 
that is improbable, since four years before writing his first sonnet he 
had composed flagrant copies of Lycidas, Allegro, and Penseroso, and 
before a third of his quatorzains were penned had begun a long poem 
in the style of Paradise Lost and made some use of Comus in one of 
his dramas. His sonnets thus seem to round out the circle of his 
conscious imitations of the master. 

In 1755,3 seven years after the publication of the first three volumes 
of " Dodsley's Miscellany," a fourth volume was added. In this were 

of rimes is usually haphazard. Most of Downman's twenty-three other quatorzains 
are conventional nature-poems. Five are in blank verse. 

' In 1799, however, the Monthly Review (enl. ed., xxix. 362) declared, "Perhaps the 
best modern sonnets are those of Edwards." They are also well spoken of, though not 
enthusiastically, in Petrarca (1803), p. cxcvi. 

^ A footnote to one of them (Works, i. 133) indicates that the phrase "plain in its 
neatness" is from Milton's translation of Horace; but "smit with the love of Song" in 
another (ib. prefatory) is unacknowledged. One of the sonnets (ib. 130) is occasioned 
by one of Milton's. 

* An early Miltonic sonnet that long remained unpublished was written about 1750 
by William Hall, urging Nicholas Hardinge to defend Milton from Lauder's attacks 
(see p. 686 below). It is Petrarchan, and begins with a proper name in the vocative. 



THE SONNET: MASON — WARTON 497 

two sonnets by that delightful personage, large of girth and larger 
of heart, who was at once laureate of the king and of Oxford ale, 
as well as boon companion of watermen, professor of poetry, and one 
of the best scholars of his day, — Thomas Warton. The two sonnets, 
one on the absence of his brother, the other on bathing, are Petrar- 
chan in arrangement of rimes, but have six run-over lines and each 
observes only one pause; in the second the turn comes at the end of 
the sixth instead of the eighth line. Warton's seven other sonnets, in 
structure, subjects, and style of the same type as the first two, were 
not published till 1777. Those written in Dugdale's Monasticon, at 
Stonehenge, and to the river Lodon live at least in our anthologies; 
but the others are also good, containing here and there lines of such 
quiet beauty as, 

Or Evening glimmer'd o'er the folded train. * 

Warton's sonnets are significant not only because they are among the 
best the century produced, if not, as Hazlitt termed them, "some of 
the finest ... in the language," ^ but because in several respects they 
marked out paths that were afterwards to be much trodden. They 
were the first to turn for their subjects from persons to nature and to 
places of legendary or historic interest. That to the river Lodon, 
furthermore, strikes apparently for the first time the note of pensive 
wistfulness in the presence of nature which a little later was dominant 
in the sonnet. Accordingly, though it probably is not Warton's best 
and does not represent the medievalism or the Miltonic stateliness 
of some of his quatorzains, it will be quoted as the one that perhaps 
exerted the most influence : 

Ah! what a weary race my feet have run, 

Since first I trod thy banks with alders crown'd, 

And thought my way was all thro' fairy ground, 

Beneath thy azure sky, and golden sun: 

Where first my Muse to lisp her notes begun! 

While pensive Memory traces back the round, 

Which fills the varied interval between; 

Much pleasure, more of sorrow, marks the scene. 

Sweet native stream! those skies and suns so pure 

No more return, to cheer my evening road! 

Yet still one joy remains, that not obscure, 

Nor useless, all my vacant days have flow'd, 

From youth's gay dawn to manhood's prime mature; 

Nor with the Muse's laurel unbestow'd. 

^ Fifth line of the first sonnet, in its final form. 

* Lectures on the English Poets, 1818 {Works, 1902, v. 120). Oliver Elton remarks 
{Survey of English Literature, 1912,1. 73) that in his sonnets Warton "aims at resonance 
and rich historical colouring. ... He has that sense of an antiquity, half-ruined by time 
and half rescued by scholarship and piety, which goes back to the Renaissance." 



498 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

The more one studies eighteenth-century sonnets, the deeper grows 
the conviction of Warton's importance in their development. Al- 
though it was 1777 before most of those he wrote got into print, they 
probably circulated in manuscript among his friends, his brother's 
pupils at Winchester, and various poetically-inclined students and 
fellows at Oxford. Owing to his position as laureate, scholar, and pro- 
fessor of poetry, owing also to the inherent worth of the verses them- 
selves, they were sure to attract considerable attention. We shall 
find evidence of their influence on Russell and Bowles, and a strong 
likelihood of their effect on Bampfylde, Holmes, Warwick, and 
Brydges, a group which, with Warton himself, includes the best 
sonneteers of the period. It is noteworthy that in 1803, when George 
Henderson made the selections for his Petrarca, a moderate-sized 
anthology of sonnets intended to represent the public taste, he in- 
cluded all of Warton's.^ 

Warton, it will be remembered, was a great admirer of Milton's 
minor poems, which he not only edited but constantly imitated and 
borrowed from in his own verse.^ His sonnets may well have been sug- 
gested by those of Edwards; yet it is possible that, like the Yorkes, 
Gray, Stillingfleet, and Edwards himself, he turned to the quatorzain 
without any thought of his contemporaries, though moved by the 
same Zeitgeist that stirred them.^ But, from whatever source the 
impulse came, it is highly probable from the nature of the poems, 
their marked inversions of word-order, and the character of their 
author's other productions, that his conception of the genre, as well 
as his model for the poems he wrote in it, was derived from the 
"organ voice of England," to which he, together with his father and 
brother, paid lifelong devotion. 

After the sonnet had received a start from these men it was taken 
up by others and slowly grew into popularity. Almost every one who 
wrote after 1750 experimented with it now and then, — Boswell, 
"Peter Pindar," Hannah More, James Montgomery, Dr. Dodd (the 
clergyman who was hanged for forgery). Charles Burney (Fanny's 
father). Bishop Percy, Anna Seward, William Roscoe (the biographer 

' Warton's influence is also seen in Thelwall's sonnet to Warwick Castle (Poetical 
Recreations, 1822, p. 44), and in Thomas Park's sonnets (1797), particularly the 19th. 
It is impossible to say just how much he affected other writers after 1789, when his 
influence blended with that of Bowles; but, according to the Monthly Review (enl. ed., 
xviii. 430), Warton's sonnets were widely read in 1795. 

- See above, pp. 243-5, 463-7, and below, p. 561. 

' Warton may have become interested in sonnets through his father (see pp. 461-2 
above and 560-61 below), particularly since the elder poet has a fourteen-line piece in 
couplets which almost certainly suggested one of his son's quatorzains (see Mant's 
edition of the son's poems, Oxford, 1802, ii. 154 n.). 



FEW SONNETS PUBLISHED 499 

of Lorenzo de' Medici), ''Perdita" Robinson, Cowper, Burns, Lamb, 
Southey, Thelwall, Leigh Hunt, Kirke White, Byron, and all the 
other romanticists, including those who wrote novels, Horace Wal- 
pole, William Beckford, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Smith, Helen 
Maria WilHams, Ameha Opie, and Thomas Holcroft. Yet authors 
were so slow in publishing their productions that it was long before 
the sonnet came into anything hke general use. Of the quatorzains 
we have thus far considered, only fifty-five — the one in the London 
Magazine, Richard Roderick's, fifty of Edwards's, one of Mason's, 
and two of War ton's — were printed before 1775, and most of these 
were little known and not of a kind to inspire imitation. Brydges 
gives us to understand that in 1782, when he began to write sonnets, 
he knew of none published since Elizabethan days except Milton's, 
Warton's, and Bampfylde's.^ How slowly the form gained favor is 
revealed by the periodicals; for the total number of quatorzains I 
have found in them all until 1777 is under twenty, whereas in 1789 
the GentJeman^s Magazine alone printed fifteen in a single issue and 
fifty-nine in the course of the year.^ In the last two decades of the 
century the same periodical and the European Magazine published 
between them nearly six hundred, the sonnet having by that time 
become perhaps the most popular kind of magazine verse. As some 
fifteen hundred or two thousand appeared in books during the same 
decades, the oft-repeated remark as to the scarcity of sonnets in the 
latter half of the eighteenth century must be another of those imagi- 
native touches with which scholarship has adorned this arid age.^ 

The most prolific writer of sonnets that the times produced was 
that Britomart of eighteenth-century poetry who has gone down to 
posterity as "the Swan of Lichfield." Anna Seward, to use her bap- 
tismal name, has enriched the world with three volumes of poetical 
effusions and six of selections from her epistolary recreations. She 
took herself so seriously that she exhausted the seriousness of the 
subject, and thus has furnished a deal of amusement (particularly 

' Poems (4th ed., 1807), 213-14. 

* The European Magazine published 17 in 1789, 24 in 1790, 34 in 1797, and on an 
average something over one a month. The average of the Gentleman's Magazine for the 
last quarter of the century was a trifle less than one a month, of the Scots and the 
London it was two a year. 

' In 1793 the Critical Review (new arr., x. 114) affirmed, "The Sonnet . . . has been 
so much cultivated of late years, and especially since Mr. Bowles and Mrs. Charlotte 
Smith have gratified the public ear with their elegant productions . . . that, to say the 
truth, we begin to be almost satiated with sonnets." Cf. ib. xxvii. 135 (1799); Mo. 
Rev. , enl. ed. , xxiv. 1 7 ( 1 797) , " Sonnets have of late been a very prevalent form of com- 
position"; and the reference in Henderson's Petrarca (p. xxxv) to "the multiplicity of 
attempts which the world has been lately accustomed to behold in this species of 
poetry." Over a thousand sonnets were published in Capel Lofft's Laura (1813-14). 



5CX) THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

since the appearance of E. V. Lucas's delightful book, A Swan and 
her Friends) for those whom she expected to edify. Our concern, 
unfortunately, is not with Miss Seward's sentimental but decided 
personality, or with the unfailing though unintended amusement to 
be found in her letters, but with her one hundred and five quatorzains. 
She began to write these in 1770, but published only a few before 
1799. On the sonnet, as on almost everything else, Miss Seward had 
ideas of her own. The rhythm, she held, should be that of blank 
verse, the pauses coming within rather than at the end of the line.^ 
To the order of the rimes she paid no attention, but she held their 
number to be important, maintaining firmly that the octave should 
have but two.^ The concluding couplet she allowed, using it in 
nearly half of her own sonnets; yet she wrote, "Nothing can be . . . 
more improper, than a new or detached thought for the conclusion 
. . . brilliance, epigrammatic turn or point, belong not to that species 
of composition." ^ On the contrary, she held that "dignity and ener- 
getic plainness were its most indispensable characteristics," that it 
should be "grave and severe," should have "strength and majesty," 
and "rather an elevated simplicity than that Popean smoothness 
and polish." * This was what Miss Seward regarded as a legiti- 
mate sonnet; it was the kind she wrote, and therefore the kind that 
every one else should write. Such a conception could have been 

' "Your objection to the monotonous chime of the legitimate sonnet . . . would be 
just," she wrote in 1786, "if the sense were carried on, as in the couplet, to the end of 
each line. But that jingling effect is entirely done away where the verses run into each 
other with undulating flow, and varied pause, after the manner of blank verse, as in 
the sublime anathema of Milton on the massacre of Piedmont (Letters,!. 186)." In ii. 
303 she speaks of " the characteristic grace of the legitimate sonnet, the floating pause " ; 
and in ii. 256 she regrets that her friend "should not love the varying pause, undulating 
through the lines of the Miltonic sonnet." 

2 Thus in the preface to her Original Sonnets (1799) she says that all but nine of the 
hundred are " strictly Sonnets. Those nine," she adds, " vary only from the rules of the 
legitimate Sonnet in that they rhime three, instead oifour times in the first part." By 
this she means that nine, instead of having two rimes occurring four times, as in the 
legitimate form, have three rimes, one occurring twice, the others three times each. 
In reality, 62 of the sonnets are not legitimate; 26 of them would be if it were not for 
the final couplet, and so would six more but for irregularities in the order of rimes in the 
sestet, while the remaining 30 have irregular octaves. Twenty of these last she con- 
sidered legitimate, because she disregarded the order in which the rimes occur; that is, 
such arrangements a.sa b b a a b a b{in sonnets 3,12,18, 20, etc.) and a b b a b b a a {in 
50, 53, 57, etc.) seemed to her regular. The five sonnets not printed in her "centenary" 
(see below, Bibl. IV, 1770) are all irregular. 

^ Letters, iv. 145. See also above, p. 487, n. 2. 

* lb. ii. 257-8, iv. 145. Cf. i. 201: "I am surprised at your idea, that Milton's 
sonnets have a singular flow of numbers, and that their author thought smoothness an 
essential perfection in that order of verse. The best of Milton's have certain hard- 
nesses, though there is a majesty, perhaps, in that very hardness, which, besides pro- 
ducing an enchanting effect . . . seems to mark the peculiarity of the composition." 



THE SONNET: MISS SEWARD 501 

derived from but one source, — of that we should be certain even 
if there were no external evidence. But Miss Seward has left pos- 
terity no doubt in the matter. Milton she regarded as "the superior 
of Virgil, and the equal ot Homer," though not so great as Shake- 
speare; she spoke of him as "that poet, who has but two equals in the 
world," ^ and she "almost " agreed with George Hardinge in thinking 
"the best of Milton's sonnets equal to any thing he has written." ^ 
"A few of them," she declared a little later, "are the best-possible 
models for that order of verse . . . and . . . should, I think, be 
kept in view by sonnet writers, as the painters of ideal beauty keep 
the Phidian statues in their galleries." ^ If this "should" be done. 
Miss Seward of course did it. We are therefore not surprised that 
she wrote of her "centenary" of quatorzains, "I dare assert . . . 
the regularity of their construction, after rules deduced from the 
Miltonic sonnet." * 

Her productions "ensued from time to time, as various circum- 
stances impressed the heart, or the imagination of their Author." ^ 
They accordingly show considerable variety in subject-matter, being 
devoted to friends, passing events, literary criticism. Contemplation, 
Ingratitude, and so on; but nature is the most frequent theme and 
melancholy the dominant tone. Most of them are commonplace in 
thought and harsh in expression; yet a few are really pleasing. This 
is one of the best: 

Now on hills, rocks, and streams, and vales, and plains, 

Full looks the shining Day. — Our gardens wear 

The gorgeous robes of the consummate Year. 

With laugh, and shout, and song, stout Maids and Swains 

Heap high the fragrant hay, as thro' rough lanes 

Rings the yet empty waggon. — See in air 

The pendent cherries, red with tempting stains, 

1 lb. iv. 225, iii. 318; cf. i. 239, ii. 52. Notwithstanding her high opinion of Shake- 
speare, she could see in his sonnets, as in those of Spenser, only "quaintness" and 
"quibbling" (v. 159). Petrarch, whom she mentioned frequently but knew only in 
translation, she also thought poorly of for the same reason (ii. 304; cf. v. 58). 

2 Ih. i. 239. This eccentric friend of Miss Seward's, who mounted a table to read 
Paradise Lost to her (see p. 7, n. 2, above), was, like his father, a Milton enthusiast. 
"Few, if any," he wrote, "can out-idolize me." His sonnets are not unlike Edwards's: 
they are addressed to persons, are Petrarchan in rime-scheme, and half of them begin 
with vocatives. As the one that seems to have been written first was composed at 
Vaucluse in 1776, it is not surprising to find that twenty-four are translations from 
the Italian. 

3 lb. ii. 303-4. 

* lb. V. 60. In numbers 5, 23, 51, 64, 67 n., 74, 75, and 78 of her Sonnets she 
either borrows from Milton or refers to him; number 77 seems to be based on Shake- 
speare's "Full many a glorious morning." 

^ Preface to her Sonnets. 



502 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Gleam thro' their boughs. — Summer, thy bright career 

Must slacken soon in Autumn's milder sway; 

Then thy now heapt and jocund meads shall stand 

Smooth, — vacant, — silent, — thro' th' exulting Land 

As wave thy Rival's golden fields, and gay 

Her Reapers throng. She smiles, and binds the sheaves; 

Then bends her parting step o'er fall'n and rustling leaves. ^ 

"The tenth Muse, the all-accomplished Seward," ^ was a person 
of no little reputation in her day; yet, as most of her poems were not 
published till the last years of the century, when sonneteers had 
plenty of other models, it is hard to say how much influence she 
exerted. At least her sonnets are typical of a considerable number 
of those written at the time. Henry F. Gary, the translator of Dante, 
who as a youth was an adopted cygnet of the Lichfield Swan, wrote 
to her in June, 1789: 

A distinction should be made between the Miltonic and Spenseric 
sonnet; the first may be used on grave and sublime, the latter on tender 
subjects; the diction of the former ought to be elevated yet simple, and 
should require a sort of majesty by the pauses and breaks peculiar to 
blank verse; that of the latter should be neat, polished, and smooth 
throughout.' 

By "Spenseric," Gary presumably meant no more than tender and 
flowing; for he seems to have been quite uninfluenced by the Amo- 
retti and probably shared Miss Seward's dislike for what little he 
knew of them. Yet, misleading as is the name he gave it, he was 
right in distinguishing a non-Miltonic type of contemporary sonnet. 
His own work, like that of his patroness and of William Hayley, 
whom both admired, like the effusions of Gharlotte Smith, Helen 
Williams,* Mrs. Robinson, Richard Polwhele, and many more whose 
names on earth are dark, differs in many ways from the poems 
hitherto considered. These later quatorzains are looser in structure, 
more careless in rime-scheme (inclining to the couplet-ending), more 
sentimental, melancholy, fluent, and trivial, hence less condensed 
and dignified ; yet practically none of them deal with love, or intro- 

1 Sonnet 36. 

^ Dedication of R. F. Cheetham's Odes, etc. (Stockport, 1796?) : see Crit. Rev., new 
arr., xxii. 84. Cf. ib. xvii. 154, xxxvi. 413; Gent. Mag., liv. 778, lix. 71; Univ. Mag., 
Ixxix. 43; etc. 

^ Henry Gary, Memoir of H. F. Cary (1847), i. 34. 

* Miss Williams, who led an adventurous life in Paris during the Revolution, was in 
1789 the recipient of a letter from Burns and was the subject of Wordsworth's earliest 
quatorzain. Her sonnet To Twilight, published in 1783, is good. She was one of the 
first to introduce sonnets into novels, and went so far as to scatter eight of her own 
through her translation of Paul and Virginia (1795). 



THE SONNET: MRS. SMITH 503 

duce conceits, or give any other evidence of Italian or Elizabethan 
influences.^ Indeed, their composers were often, like Miss Seward, 
enthusiastic admirers of Milton and his professed followers in the 
field of the sonnet. Hayley wrote a sympathetic life of him, Pol- 
whele imitated him frequently, and Gary, whose great translation 
shows the influence of Paradise Lost, scattered its author's phrases 
through his own quatorzains. Yet the work of these poetasters, 
though more like Milton's than any one's else, is not Miltonic. It is, 
indeed, like nothing before and fortunately like very little since, but 
is distinctly of the second half of the eighteenth century. 

Just who began writing these invertebrate, fourteen-line occa- 
sional poems it would be hard to say; several favorite sons and 
daughters of Apollo may have slipped easily and unconsciously into 
them at about the same time. At any rate, their vogue was due, not 
to the influence of Hayley or Miss Seward, but to their being the 
kind of poem that bards who were tired of composing mechanical 
imitations of Allegro and Penseroso found most to their taste. The 
tendency of the poems to deal with nature, and to be pensive or even 
melancholy in tone, reached its orbed fulfilment in the "Elegiac Son- 
nets" of Charlotte Smith. These doleful ditties, which came finally 
to number ninety-four, enjoyed a remarkable popularity: they went 
through eleven English editions and were reprinted in America; 
they were praised by Wordsworth and Scott and were regarded as 
models by Coleridge.^ One periodical spoke of them as "the most 
popular in the language, and deservedly so"; another declared that 
Milton's did not compare with them; and a third asserted, "A very 
trifling compliment is paid to Mrs. Smith, when it is observed how 
much her Sonnets exceed those of Shakspeare and Milton. She has 
undoubtedly conferred honour on a species of poetry which most of 
her predecessors in this country have disgraced." ' Yet twentieth- 
century readers of her verses, if there be any such, will agree rather 
with the writer who termed her "a puny poet, puling to the moon";^ 

' Mrs. Mary Robinson ("Perdita") wrote the only eighteenth-century sonnet- 
sequence that I know. It consists of forty-three poems which deal with Sappho's un- 
fortunate love for Phaon, and which, strangely enough, are in every respect legitimate 
sonnets. Mrs. Robinson, like others of her kind, is fond of such lines as 
Night's dewy orb, that o'er yon limpid stream. 

2 Wordsworth, Prose Works (ed. Grosart, 1876), iii. 151; Scott, Prose Works (1827), 
iv. 49-50; Coleridge, Poetical Works (Globe ed.), 543. 

^ Crit. Rev., new arr., xxxiv. 393 (1802); Univ. Mag., xci. 414 (1792); Gent. Mag., 
Ivi. 334 (1786). Cf. New London Mag., v. 212 (1789); Crit. Rev., new arr., xxxvi. 413 
(1802), and xxi. 149-51 (1797, an unfavorable comment). 

* Quoted by Miss Seward (who heartily agreed) in Letters, vi. 43; and cf. ii. 287, 
where she speaks of Mrs. Smith's "everlasting lamentables, which she calls sonnets, 



504 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

for most of her elegies are quite impossible, — diffuse, self-conscious, 
sentimental, written in a conventional, stilted diction, 'and, notwith- 
standing the genuineness of their author's sorrows, apt to leave an 
impression of rhetoric and declamation rather than of real feeling. 
Nearly half of them employ the Shakespearean rime-scheme, and the 
irregularity of the remainder seems to be due to Mrs. Smith's un- 
willingness — which she shared with most writers of this kind of 
sonnet — to work hard over her productions. In encouraging the 
use of these easier arrangements of rimes, in introducing quatorzains 
into her popular novels (a practice quickly adopted by Ann Rad- 
cliffe, Beckford, and others), and in fastening the elegiac mood upon 
the genre so firmly that it remained throughout the century and was 
regarded by many as indispensable, — in these things she is a force to 
be reckoned with. 

Mrs. Smith dedicated her "everlasting duns on pity" ^ to William 
Hayley, the fluent, pretty emptiness of whose sonnets and other 
poems seems to have had not a httle influence upon writers of her 
kind. In 1780 his brow seemed wreathed with unfading laurel, but if 
he is known at all to-day it is as the friend of Blake, Cowper, and 
Romney. Byron erred in describing his verse as 

For ever feeble and for ever tame,^ 

for some of his sonnets to persons have sufficient dignity to recall 
faintly those of Milton, whom he greatly admired; but as a rule 
they tinkle along as aimlessly as water in a drawing-room fountain. 
Like many of the fourteen-line effusions written during the last 
quarter of the century, they are not bad but futile. In expression 
they are conventional and far from vigorous. There is usually no 
particular fault to be found with any single line, but after reading 
many lines we remember none, because they contain nothing but 
empty compliments and obvious ideas, because they leave only the 
impression that their author is a well-meaning, sentimental person 
who desires to write but has nothing to say. The attitude of such 
poetasters towards the form was thus expressed by Richard Pol- 
whele in 1785 : *'The sonnet seems peculiarly turned to the beautiful; 
and . . . the more picturesque objects of still life. But the sublime . . . 
is obviously incompatible with such miniature-painting . . . the 

made up of hackneyed scraps of dismality, with which her memory furnished her from 
our various poets." Mrs. Smith's genuine and often pleasantly-expressed love of 
nature is more clearly seen in her descriptive poem, Beacky Head (see p. 255 above), 
than in her sonnets. 

* Miss Seward, Letters, vi. 43. 

* English Bards, 314. 



THE SONNET: HAYLEY — BELLA CRUSCANS 505 

Italian method, perhaps, needs not in all cases be abandoned; though 
... it often gives the sonnet an air of formality and constraint." ^ 

The diffuse, pretty, melancholy type of quatorzain was gladly 
received and made the most of by the lesser luminaries, who rejoiced 
in the ease with which it could be written. As a result, 

Reams of outrageous sonnets, thick as snow,^ 

descended upon the press, and amateur versifiers who lacked both 
skill and ideas turned to the sonnet and the ode as fit vehicles for 
their saccharine imbecilities. The most popular of these triflers were 
known as the Delia Cruscans, from a famous Florentine academy to 
which one of them belonged. After publishing two volumes of mis- 
cellanies — one unmistakably Miltonic — during a residence in 
Italy, some of them transferred their activities to an Enghsh daily, 
The World, where "Delia Crusca" "announced himself by a sonnet to 
Love," which was taken up by "Anna Matilda," "Laura Maria," 
"Benedict," "the Bard," and others, until "from one end of the 
kingdom to the other, all was nonsense and Delia Crusca." These 
silly prattlers and others hke them had greatly injured the reputa- 
tion of the quatorzain before Gifford silenced them with his slashing 
satires.^ Fortunately, there were always some persons who con- 
tinued the tradition of the serious, dignified, Miltonic sonnet, and it 
is to these that we now return, interposing a little ease in our survey 
of commonplace, conventional verse by pausing over some neglected 
flowers of true poetry. 

1 Traditions and Recollections (1826), i. 174-5. 

2 William Gifford, The Maeviad, 272. 

^ The Baviad (1791), and The Maeviad (1795). The introduction to the collected 
(1797) edition of these two works — the best account we have of the movement — is 
the source of the quotations given above. The Delia Cruscans were no more a definite 
body than were the New England transcendentalists. Mrs. Piozzi (Dr. Johnson's 
Mrs. Thrale) was the center of the group in Florence; but, except for a piece by Bertie 
Greatheed and one by William Parsons, Robert Merry appears to have been the only 
one of the number who contributed to the World. As the poems published in this paper 
were anonymous, apparently any one — even Sheridan — who fell in with the fad and 
had his verses accepted was a Delia Cruscan. Merry and "Perdita" Robinson were, 
however, the principal offenders. It was not by a "sonnet," but by a piece of forty- 
four lines that Merry "announced himself." Gifford's mis-statement illustrates the 
close connection in the popular mind between the Delia Cruscans and sonneteering. 
So far as the professedly incomplete Poetry of the World shows, only fourteen quator- 
zains were published in the PForW(see Bibl. IV, 1778 w., 1786-90 w., 1787-8, and 1790); 
yet Mrs. Robinson wrote many sonnets, and Gifford quotes and refers to others in 
his satires on the movement. The few volumes of verse composed by the Delia 
Cruscans are in themselves negligible, but as a symptom of the times, as a crystallization 
of vague, floating tendencies, they are of some importance. Delia Cruscanism was in 
the air before Merry began to write, and was e.xhibited by many who never read the 
Florence Miscellany or the World. I shall accordingly use the term in its larger and 
looser signification, not restricting it to verse by members of the group. 



5o6 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Of these, "the rathe primrose that forsaken dies" is represented 
by the work of John Bampfylde, a poet whose character, unfortunate 
career, and fresh, hearty verses in praise of country life recall the 
forgotten John Clare and the Scottish peasant, contemporary with 
both, who 

walked in glory and in joy, 
Following his plough, along the mountain-side. 

Those who would learn what little is known of the strange rustic 
of noble birth who, when taken from the farm and the free out-of- 
doors which he loved, fell into dissipation and lost his mind, re- 
covering it only to die of consumption, must read Southey's letter to 
Sir Egerton Brydges.^ Not all of Bampfylde's sonnets have been 
published, and the sixteen that he printed in 1778 are practically un- 
known; yet their love of nature and of rustic life, their close obser- 
vation, their healthy, happy genuineness and poetic feeling, entitle 
them to remembrance. They are historically important as the earli- 
est printed sonnets to deal almost exclusively with nature, and 
except for Warton's (most of which were published the year before) 
the earliest to be in themselves really attractive.^ In their rime- 
scheme, their use of run-over hnes, their disregard of the pauses and 
the turn, their dignity and slight stiffness, they suggest Milton, from 
whom they borrow a number of phrases. Here is a typical sonnet : 

As when, to one who long hath watch'd, the Morn 
Advancing, slow fore-warns th' approach of day, 
(What time the young and flowery-kirtled May 
Decks the green hedge and dewy grass unshorn 
With cowslips pale, and many a whitening thorn;) 
And now the Sun comes forth with level ray, 
Gilding the high-wood top and mountain grey; 
And as he climbs, the Meadows 'gins adorn: 
The Rivers glisten to the dancing beam, 
Th' awaken'd Birds begin their amorous strain. 
And Hill and Vale with joy and fragrance teem; 
Such is the sight of thee; thy wish'd return 
To eyes, like mine, that long have wak'd to mourn, 
That long have watch'd for light, and wept in vain.' 

1 Brydges, Autobiography (1834), ii. 257-61. 

2 Bampfylde's sonnets were probably influenced, if not suggested, by those of the 
laureate; for the tenth is "To Mr. Warton, on reading his History of English Poetry," 
and the second "On having Dined at Trinity College, Oxford," an occasion on which, 
as Mr. Saintsbury suggests {Camb. Hist. Eng. Lit., English ed.,xii. 133), Warton, who 
lived at Trinity, may well have been the host. The younger poet's "I ween," "erst," 
"sprent," etc., also recall Warton. Six sonnets by Robert Holmes, which were pub- 
lished the same year as Bampfylde's, likewise deal with nature, though in a conven- 
tional way, and show the same influence. 

* Sixteen Sonnets (1778), no. iii. Lines 6-9 are perhaps indebted to Shakespeare's 



THE SONNET: BAMPFYLDE — RUSSELL 507 

Equal with Bampfylde in fate as well as in renown is the gifted 
young Oxford don, Thomas Russell, who did not live to see the 
publication of his poems in 1789. Southey termed him *'the best 
English sonnet- writer," Wordsworth transferred four of his lines to 
one of his own sonnets, and Landor, with characteristic exaggeration, 
said that the following lines on Philoctetes at Lemnos would ''au- 
thorise" Russell "to join the shades of Sophocles and Euripides":^ 

On this lone Isle, whose rugged rocks affright 

The cautious pilot, ten revolving years 

Great Paean's Son, unwonted erst to tears, 

Wept o'er his wound: alike each rolling light 

Of heaven he watch'd, and blam'd it's lingering flight, 

By day the sea-mew screaming round his cave 

Drove slumber from his eyes, the chiding wave. 

And savage howlings chas'd his dreams by night. 

Hope still was his: in each low breeze, that sigh'd 

Thro' his rude grot, he heard a coming oar. 

In each white cloud a coming sail he spied ; 

Nor seldom listen'd to the fancied roar 

Of Oeta's torrents, or the hoarser tide 

That parts fam'd Trachis from th' Euboic shore. 

This is by no means Russell's only notable sonnet; in fact, nearly 
all of the seventeen that are original are so good that it is hard to 
understand why they are not better known. The one on Philoctetes 
is unrepresentative only in being more classic in subject than the rest; 
for Russell often joined the band which 

On Cherwell's sedgy banks with Warton stray'd 
And woo'd the Muse in gothic stole array'd.^ 

"Full many a glorious morning," and the first line to P. L., ix. 445. Here are a few 
of the fifteen or twenty other phrases he took from Milton: "meads with slime are 
sprent and ways with mire " (i. 5, cf . Milton's sonnet to Lawrence, 2) ; " Voice, and Verse 
Divine, and Tuscan Air" (ii. 11, cf. also 12 and P. L., vii. 2); "ere the lawns . . . ap- 
pear" (iv. 4,cf. Lycidas, 25); " rocking winds " and "winds are piping loud" (v. 9, vi. 2, 
cf . Penseroso, 1 26) ; "secure rode tilting o'er the placid wave " (vi. 9, cf . P. L. , xi. 746-7) ; 
"other climes, and other shades among" (x. 13, cf. Lye, 174); "Lycid, 'bright Genius 
of the sounding shore'" (xi. 9, cf. Lye, 183); "Myrtle never-sear, and gadding Vine . . . 
mossy cell" (xii. 2, 9; cf. Lye, 2, 40, and Pen., 169). Bampfylde's observation and 
poetic power are shown in such touches as "The glow-worm's kindling ray . . . The long 
moist grass with greenish Light illumes" (from the Harvard manuscript) ; or in his de- 
scription of a wet summer (sonnet xvi. 11-14), 

Mute is the mournful plain, 
Silent the swaUow sits beneath the thatch. 
And vacant hind hangs pensive o'er his hatch. 
Counting the frequent drop from reeded eaves. 

' For these and other references, see D. M. Main's Treasury of English Sonnets 
(Manchester, 1880), 363-5. I am much indebted to Mr. Main's admirable notes. 
' Henry Kett, Verses on the Death of Mr. Headley, in Park's edition of Henry Head- 



508 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

He sang of minstrels and chivalry, of the owl, the curfew, "towers of 
antique fame," ''Gothic fanes, dim isles, and cloysters hoar," of the 
Arabian Nights, and of Boccaccio's Ghismonda.^ It was natural that 
he should take the Oxford professor of poetry somewhat as his 
model; for their literary tastes were similar, he had been a pupil of 
the elder Warton at Winchester when the younger brother pub- 
lished his sonnets, and, as he came to the defence of the History of 
English Poetry,'^ he must have known its likable author in the eight 
years that both were at Oxford. Russell's poems have the fondness 
for nature and the melancholy — though of a darker hue — that 
mark Warton's work, but almost none of its savor of quaintness. 
They move with greater ease, sometimes softening the dignity of the 
elder poet into pity and tenderness, and again lifting it to a nobility 
of utterance that the sonnet had not known since Milton's day. This 
last trait is seen not only in the account of Philoctetes, but in such 
lines as 

Not for thy Gothic Trumpet's martial rage . . . 

The Bard sublime of Terrour, and of Tears.^ 

Indeed, in their vigor, compactness, and dignified reserve, as well as 
in their loftiness of thought and expression, some of Russell's sonnets 
are not only the most Miltonic but probably the best that the 
eighteenth century produced. 

"It was, while at Cambridge, in my twentieth year [1781]," wrote 
Sir Egerton Brydges, "that constantly poring over Milton, and in- 
creasing in my admiration of his early poems, from the impotent 
attempt of Johnson to decry them, I proceeded from that admira- 
tion to a rash effort to imitate those simply-majestic productions in 
this way," * — that is, in writing sonnets. This information is of the 

ley's Poems (1808), p. 8. Headley, a friend of Russell and Bowles and author of one 
uninteresting sonnet, was strongly influenced by Thomas Warton, particularly by his 
blank verse. 

1 Three of his sonnets are from the Italian, one from the German, and two from the 
Portuguese; he has a fourteen-line "imitation" from the Greek (in couplets), an ode 
"imitated" from the Spanish, and an interesting address to Cervantes in which he 
laments that reason has banished romance. He refers to the Philoctetes of Sophocles 
as "that romantic . . . tragedy." One of the sonnets is on love. Russell was an ad- 
mirer of Spenser, but neither his style nor his diction is influenced by the Faerie Queefie, 
and there is no evidence that he even knew the Amoretti. The first stanza of his ode 
To Silence is modelled upon Allegro and Penseroso. 

2 Gent. Mag., Hi. 574-5, hii- 123-4 (1782-3). 

' Sonnet vi, To Boccaccio, i, 14. Mr. J. H. Hanford, to whom I am indebted for 
many excellent suggestions, remarks that the nobility of the Philoctetes sonnet is due 
in part to the greatness of Sophocles's tragedy from which it is derived, and particularly 
to the chorus that begins at line 676. 

* Poems (4th ed., 1807), 213-14. Brydges called attention iib. 215-19) to the simi- 
larity of his first, twelfth, seventeenth, and twenty-first sonnets to some of Milton's, 



THE SONNET: BRYDGES 509 

more value because the poems do not seem particularly Miltonic. 
To be sure, the legitimate arrangement of rimes is found in the early- 
ones, the pauses are often disregarded, and run-over lines are com- 
mon ; but the poems all lack the intensity, austerity, and condensa- 
tion which mark those of Brydges's master. They deal with nature, 
— somewhat pensively, as a rule, — and, though neither magical nor 
profound, are far more pleasing than most of the quatorzains of the 
time. Of his sixty-five, one which Wordsworth declared to be *' above 
all, among modern writers," and of which Southey said, "I know 
not any poem in any language more beautifully imaginative," 
deserves to be quoted: 

In eddying course v/hen leaves began to fly, 

And Autumn in her lap the store to strew, 

As mid wild scenes I chanced the Muse to woo, 

Thro' glens untrod and woods that frown'd on high, 

Two sleeping Nymphs with wonder mute I spy! 

And, lo, she's gone! — In robe of dark-green hue 

'Twas Echo from her sister Silence flew. 

For quick the hunter's horn resounded to the sky! 

In shade affrighted Silence melts away. 

Not so her sister. — Hark! for onward still 

With far-heard step she takes her listening way. 

Bounding from rock to rock, and hill to hill. 

Ah, mark the merry Maid in mockful play 

With thousand mimic tones the laughing forest fill! ^ 

but said nothing about several verbal borrowings, such as "with dangers compass'd 
round " (ib. 45, cf . P. L. , vii. 27) . He imitated Milton's octosyllabics later in this same 
volume (p. 56) and his blank verse elsewhere. What particularly struck him in the 
Puritan quatorzains was their "rejection of flowery language," a feature that, coming 
at a critical period of his literary career, was never forgotten and seems to have afifected 
all his poetry. Fifty years later he wrote in his Autobiography (1834, i. 5, and cf. 175), 
"On my arrival at Cambridge, October, 1780, I gave myself up to English poetry. I 
had, in studying Milton's nolile Sonnets, — noble in defiance of Johnson, — convinced 
myself of the force and majesty of plain language; and I resolved never to be seduced 
into a departure from it." In his Censtira Literaria (1808, vi. 415) he had said of these 
same sonnets, "For seven and twenty years they have been the objects of my admira- 
tion; and I do not like them the less because they are deficient in all the finical pretti- 
nesses of modern poetry." Yet in his 1835 edition of Milton (Boston, 1854, pp. 736-8) 
he frankly took "a less favourable view." 

1 See Wordsworth to A. Dyce, 1833, Letters, iii. 31; Brydges, Autobiography, ii. 262; 
cf. Leigh Hunt's London Journal, July 23, 1834, p. 134. The extra foot in the eighth 
and fourteenth lines of the poem is an unusual feature. Warton and Bampfylde, the 
only eighteenth-century sonneteers with whose work Brydges seems to have been 
acquainted when he began to write {Poems, 1807, p. 213), must also have influenced 
him, for his poems are much closer to theirs than to Milton's. In his Autobiography (i. 
35) he writes, "I had not been three days at Cambridge before the little quarto pam- 
phlet of Sixteen Sonnets by John Bampfylde was put into my hands, and I have never 
since forgotten them." 



5IO THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

We have already seen how Cowper's enthusiasm for Milton led to 
his writing The Task and rendering Homer in a blank verse adapted 
from Paradise Lost. Another fruit of his devotion was a translation 
of the Italian and Latin poems of his favorite author. He began his 
version of the former (all but one of which are sonnets) in February, 
1792, and finished it by March of the same year.^ Cowper was over 
sixty at this time and, except for one published anonymously four 
years earlier, had never written a quatorzain. The translating seems 
to have interested him in the form, for we find him composing an 
original sonnet the following month (April 16, 1792), another in 
May, and a third in June; October brought another, the following 
May two more, and June still another.^ None of these eight are 
strictly Petrarchan; but the couplet-ending, which is used in all but 
the first, probably came from Milton, since four of them, as well 
as all the translations, employ the same rime-scheme as three 
of Milton's Italian sonnets. All are addressed to friends, all begin 
with vocatives, all are serious, dignified, and inclined to be stately, 
although the finest, that to Mrs. Unwin, owes its beauty to the 
simple expression of deep and tender feeHng. The legitimate pauses 
are usually observed, but run-over lines and internal pauses abound, 
and, together with inversions of the natural word-order, recall the 
Miltonic blank verse that Cowper had so long written. Two of the 
sonnets appear to be clearly, though not closely, patterned after two 
of Milton's.^ The nature of the poems themselves, therefore, as well 
as the impulse which led to their composition, suggests that Cowper's 
sonnets aff^ord another illustration of his debt to his ''idol." 

"I had just entered on my seventeenth year," wrote Coleridge, 
''when the sonnets of Mr. Bowles, twenty in number, and just then 
published . . . were first made known and presented to me. . . . My 
earhest acquaintances will not have forgotten the undisciplined 
eagerness and impetuous zeal with which I laboured to make prose- 
lytes, not only of my companions, but of all with whom I conversed, 
of whatever rank, and in whatever place. As my school finances did 
not permit me to purchase copies, I made, within less than a year and 
a half, more than forty transcriptions, as the best presents I could 
offer to those who had in any way won my regard. . . . My obliga- 
tions to Mr. Bowles were indeed important, and for radical good." 

1 See his letters to James Hurdis and Mrs. King, Feb. 21 and March 8, 1792. 

^ Bailey, in his edition of Cowper (1905, p. 445), prints one more, To a Young Lady 
on her Birthday, but says nothing about its date. It is Petrarchan, and recalls Milton's 
"Lady that in the prime of earliest youth." 

' Compare that to Wilberforce with Milton's on Cromwell, and that to Dr. Austen 
with Milton's "Captain, or Colonel, or Knight in arms." See also p. 521, n. 3, below. 



THE SONNET: CO WPER — BOWLES 51 1 

This passage from the Biographia Literaria,^ and the faint memory 
of his quarrel with Byron over Pope, have preserved for Bowles 
a dubious sort of half-existence in the history of our literature, 
hardly a flattering position in view of the oft-expressed surprise 
that such thin, sentimental verses could have profoundly affected 
a great poet. This is unfair. Bowles's quiet sonnets, though not 
great and far from revolutionary, are natural in language, genuine if 
over-melancholy in feeling, easy and flowing without being diffuse, 
dignified without being stilted, and, with their pensive interpreta- 
tions of nature, have a tender charm for persons who really read 
them. Poems like the following certainly do not suffer from a com- 
parison with those of Coleridge, which they inspired: 

How sweet the tuneful! bells' responsive peal! 
As when, at opening morn, the fragrant breeze 
Breathes on the trembling sense of pale disease. 
So piercing to my heart their force I feel ! 
And hark! with lessening cadence now they fall! 
And now, along the white and level tide. 
They fling their melancholy music wide; 
Bidding me many a tender thought recall 
Of summer-days, and those delightful years 
When from an ancient tower, in life's fair prime, 
The mournful magic of their mingling chime 
First waked my wondering childhood into tears! 
But seeming now, when all those days are o'er, 
The sounds of joy once heard, and heard no more. 

The circumstances under which Bowles composed his first volume 
were such as might easily have given birth to "an epoch-marking 
work." In 1785 or thereabouts, when fresh from college, he sought 
to forget an unfortunate love-affair by wandering through northern 
England, Scotland, and parts of the continent. At various pictur- 
esque spots on his journey, principally rivers, castles, and ruined 
abbeys, he composed sonnets. These, he afterwards declared, were 
thought out in the open air with no idea of publication, and were not 
even written down until three years later. "I confined myself to 
fourteen lines," he explained, "because fourteen lines seemed best 
adapted to unity of sentiment. I thought nothing about the strict 

1 Bohn ed., 6-7. In the same passage he speaks of his early favorite as "a poet, by 
whose works, year after year, I was so enthusiastically delighted and inspired." See 
also ib. 11-12; Main's English Sonnets, 362 n.; and Coleridge's sonnet to Bowles 
(Poetical Works, Globe ed., 40-41 and note). Wordsworth was so much impressed by 
Bowles's sonnets that he "kept his brother waiting on Westminster bridge until, seated 
in one of its recesses, he had read through the little quarto" (Coleridge, Poetical Works, 
p. xviii). 



512 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Italian model; the verses naturally flowed in unpremeditated har- 
mony, as my ear directed." They were, however, considerably 
"corrected" before they were printed.^ 

Bowles's first publication included only fourteen sonnets, — not 
all he had written up to that time ; but in the editions which rapidly 
followed each other more were added, until by 1805 there were thirty- 
two in print. Then, after a break of some twenty years during which 
none were composed, he wrote eighteen more. These later ones are 
nearer the Petrarchan rime-scheme than the earUer, and two of them 
follow it strictly; yet twenty-seven out of his total of fifty have the 
arrangement abbacddceffegg; the other sequences, of which 
there are almost twenty, tend towards the Petrarchan, though all 
but fourteen of the poems end with couplets. In the late as well as 
the early ones the structure is practically that of blank verse, with 
no regard for pauses or turn. 

From the circumstances under which the earlier sonnets were com- 
posed, they might be expected to be unusually free from the influence 
of either contemporary or older writers; yet this seems not to have 
been the case. Things had changed greatly since Edwards's time: 
the sonnet had become a living form, and the verses which "natu- 
rally flowed" from Bowles's lips would almost invariably be like 
those of his contemporaries. His first volume, Fourteen Sonnets, 
Elegiac and Descriptive, written during a Tour (1789), probably owed 
its title to Bampfylde's Sixteen Sonnets, to which, as both books deal 
with nature, it may have been otherwise indebted. The year he 
published his sonnets Bowles devoted five stanzas to the memory of 
Thomas Russell, who had been "the gay companion" of his "strip- 
ling prime" at Winchester and again "by Isis' stream." ^ The 
quatorzains of the two friends are alike in their melancholy and in 
their fondness for nature, but Russell's are far more vigorous and 
lofty. As the two volumes were published the same year, and as the 
poems had in each case been written more than twelve months earlier, 
the young men could have known each other's work only in manu- 
script, if at all. Possibly they exchanged verses in school and college 
days ; possibly neither knew the poems, or at least the sonnets, of the 
other, the similarities being in part temperamental and in part due 
to their acquaintance with Thomas Warton. 

1 These statements are derived principally from the prefaces to Sonnets (1805) and 
Scenes and Shadows of Days Departed, etc. (1837). In the Scenes Bowles for the first 
time makes it clear that there were two love-affairs, each of which inspired sonnets. On 
the whole subject, see the thesis on Bowles (Harvard, 1914) by Mr. Garland Greever, 
to whom I am indebted for looking up a number of matters in the British Museum. 

'^ Elegy written at the Hotwells, stanzas 16-20. 



THE SONNET: BOWLES 513 

Bowles could hardly have escaped Warton's influence. He had 
received much encouragement and direction in versifying from the 
poet's brother Joseph, his master at Winchester; ^ and, as he chose 
Trinity College, Oxford, because "Thomas Warton was residing 
there," ^ he must have known and liked that genial scholar. There 
can be no question that in his formative years he knew Warton's 
sonnets, for they were published in 1777, while Bowles was a pupil at 
Winchester; and he must have admired them, since he wrote the 
same kind himself. Warton's poems are devoted mainly to nature, 
so are Bowles's; next to nature, Warton is principally concerned with 
the romantic and picturesque monuments of the past, and so is 
Bowles; several of Warton's sonnets are pensive, as are nearly all of 
Bowles's; Warton always writes in a dignified, elevated style, Bowles 
does the same; and, finally, Warton's sonnet to the river Lodon as 
certainly inspired Bowles's to the river Itchin as that in turn in- 
spired Coleridge's to the river Otter.^ Aside from the greater pen- 
siveness of Bowles's poems, which is due to the circumstances under 
which they were composed, the only important difference between 
the work of the two men is one of expression, — the younger writer 
is more fluent, less archaic, less conventional; and it was precisely 

1 In lines 120-25 of his Monody on Dr. Warton Bowles tells us that his master led 
him to Milton's poems; therefore he must have been familiar with the sonnets at an 
early age. Two of his own deal with Milton, and in other pieces he borrows phrases 
(e. g., To Burke, last line, "Content, though poor, had we no other guard," cf. the last 
line of Milton's second sonnet to Skinner; Elegy written at the Hotwells, 43, "Some 
natural tears she drops, but wipes them soon," cf. P. L., xii. 645; and see above, p. 
257, n. 4) ; one of his early poems, The Dying Slave, imitates the close of Comus; and his 
blank verse, of which there is a good deal, is unmistakably derived from Paradise Lost. 
In their seriousness and directness his sonnets are Miltonic, but they lack the reserve, 
austerity, and vigor of the Puritan stanzas; they are sweeter, less compact, more flow- 
ing, and, though a number begin with vocatives, few are concerned with persons. They 
are the kind of poems that Bowles naturally wrote, and the kind he would probably 
have written even if he had been as ardent an admirer of his predecessor's sonnets as 
were Brydges and Miss Seward, whose work is, indeed, scarcely more Miltonic than 
his own. 

2 Works (ed. Gilfillan), vol. ii, p. xiii. Each of the Wartons stimulated his imagina- 
tion, his love of ruins, his inclination towards melancholy poetry, and his other romantic 
tendencies. 

^ Warton's sonnet is given on p. 497 above. The other two poems express a similar 
feeling. Bowles asks why he feels pain at revisiting the river: 

Is it, that many a summer's day has past 
Since, in life's morn, I carolled on thy side! 
Is it, that oft since then my heart has sighed! 



Coleridge writes, 



Dear native Brook! wild Streamlet of the West! 
How many various-fated years have past, 
What happy and what mournful hours, since last 
I skimmed the smooth thin stone along thy breast. 



514 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

because of this natural and poetic voicing of genuine feeling that 
Bowles made so profound an impression on Coleridge.^ Except 
in these respects his quatorzains can hardly be distinguished from 
many others of the period. Their importance does not lie in the in- 
troduction of new subjects into the sonnet or in a novel treatment 
of old ones, and not, as some have asserted, in their pensive melan- 
choly, their "power to harmonise the moods of nature with those of 
the mind," or their combining introspection with outlook or descrip- 
tion with sentiment in a new way.^ In these matters Bowles had 
been anticipated by Warton, Brydges, Thomas Warwick,^ Mrs. 
Smith, Miss Wilhams, and others; but he did dwell repeatedly, 
movingly, and naturally on themes which before 1789 sonneteers had 
seldom touched and only once or twice with success. 

Coleridge was by no means Bowles's only admirer. The "Four- 
teen Sonnets" were reissued with additions the year they appeared, 
and by 1805 had passed through nine printings. Other volumes, to 
be sure, were enjoying equal or greater favor; but Bowles had the 
good fortune of appealing particularly to poets, with the result that 
few sonnets of the period immediately following escaped his influ- 
ence. From 1790 to 1810 every picturesque spot visited by a bard — 
and all were bards in those days — received the tribute of a sonnet, 
no season passed without being made the subject of many quator- 
zains, and any ramble through the woods, any twilight, any lovely or 
depressing day, was likely to be eternized in fourteen lines of tender 
melancholy. It was largely because Bowles was not an innovator 
but a perfecter, because he hit the temper of the time by giving 
pleasant and natural expression to the mood of elegiac sentiment 
which already pervaded other forms of literature, that his poems 
came to be so popular. 

Of the numerous forgotten effusions which sprang up under their 
influence and which in general show marked improvement over those 
of the two preceding decades, it is hardly necessary to speak, for 

' See the Biographia Literaria (Bohn ed.), 11-12, and in particular the following 
sentence, "Of the then living poets Bowles and Cowper were, to the best of my knowl- 
edge, the first who combined natural thoughts with natural diction; the first who 
reconciled the heart with the head." As he did not know The Task "till many years 
afterwards" [ib. 12 n.), Bowles was for him "the first." 

2 See Did. Nat. Biog.; and Saintsbury, in Camb. Hist. Eng. Lit., English ed., xi. 178. 

^ Most of Warwick's sonnets, which were published in 1783, deal with nature, are 
somewhat melancholy in tone, and were written on picturesque spots during journeys. 
Like those of Bowles, they lament an absent sweetheart, picture castles and ruined 
abbeys, and one has a title that the later poet uses, On Revisiting Oxford; yet in ex- 
pression they are more formal and stately, closer to Milton's and Warton's. Did 
Bowles know them? 



THE SONNET: COLERIDGE 515 

Bowles's greatest significance undoubtedly lies in the inspiration he 
furnished to the lake poets and their friends. The term "inspiration" 
is used advisedly ; for, though Coleridge published what he regarded 
as his best pieces under the caption "Sonnets attempted in the 
Manner of the Rev. W. L. Bowles," not many of them warrant that 
description. Few deal with places, most, unlike their models, being 
called forth either by events or by persons. The majority are melan- 
choly, to be sure; but, as the sadness is analytical and more intro- 
spective and usually has nothing to do with nature (which plays an 
important part in only a ninth of the poems), it is in most cases dif- 
ferent from Bowles's "lonely pang with dreamy joys combin'd." ^ 
In fact, if Coleridge had any eighteenth-century model at all, it 
would seem to have been Charlotte Smith, whose poems together 
with those of Bowles, he tells us, furnished the basis of his concep- 
tion of the sonnet. His quatorzains are much better and less lugubri- 
ous than hers; but in their diction and loose formlessness, and, when 
they are melancholy, in their picturing the grief itself instead of 
nature or things, they recall the strains of the "Mistress of the Pen- 
sive Lyre." Like hers, too, they belong, not to the Miltonic but 
to the Hayley-Della Cruscan school. Even the thirteen "on emi- 
nent characters" are disfigured with expressions like "dewy light," 
"warbled strains," "soft anguish," "tear's ambrosial dew," and 
"temples with Hymettian flow'rets wreathed"; hence the title 
"effusions" (which they had till Lamb exclaimed, "Call [them] son- 
nets for God's sake" ^) was entirely suitable. 

Their "affectation of unaffectedness," their "puny pathos," 
"doleful egotism," and "elaborate and swelling language," were 
clear to Coleridge, for he wrote his Nehemiah Higginbottom sonnets 
to parody these defects in his own work, as well as in that of Lamb 
and Lloyd.^ "The Sonnet," he admitted, "has been ever a favorite 
species of composition with me ; but I am conscious that I have not 
succeeded in it. From a large number I have retained ten only, as 
not beneath mediocrity." * It is, indeed, something very like medi- 

' Coleridge's sonnet on Bowles, first version, line 9. Mr. Arthur Symons very 
property calls attention to the "moralising landscapes" in Coleridge's sonnets, but he 
errs in saying that they "are distinctly foreshadowed in those of Bowles" {Romantic 
Movement in English Poetry, 1909, p. 66) . I do not remember them as a marked feature 
of any previous sonneteer's work. ^ Letter to Coleridge, Dec. 2, 1796. 

' Letter to Joseph Cottle, Nov., 1797, quoted in Globe edition of Coleridge, p. 599; 
Biographia Literaria (Bohn ed.), 12-13. "Cultivate simplicity, Coleridge," wrote 
Lamb, Nov. 8, 1796; and Coleridge himself owned to the "general turgidness" of his 
poems and their frequent deviations from "nature and simplicity" {Poems, 2d ed., 
1797, preface; and letter to Thelwall, Dec. 17, 1796). 

* "Introduction to the Sonnets," Poems (1797), 74. 



5l6 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

ocrity — the unpardonable sin in art — which must be charged 
against the poems; for most of them make that worst of all impres- 
sions, no impression at all. They lack vigor and feeling, compactness 
and distinction of phrasing, as well as the ease and finished grace 
which give charm to many lighter productions. Few of them, on 
their poetic merits alone, are entitled to live; indeed, few have 
ever been alive. 

. Coleridge needed not only the loftier conceptions of the sonnet 
which better models would have given him, but the challenge offered 
by the difficulties of the legitimate form. " Respecting the metre . . .", 
he declared, "the Writer should consult his own convenience. — 
Rhymes, many or few, or no rhymes at all — whatever the chastity 
of his ear may prefer, whatever the rapid expression of his feelings 
will permit." Of the Petrarchan form he was intolerant: "If there be 
one species of composition more difficult and artificial than another, 
it is an English Sonnet on the Italian Model. Adapted to the agita- 
tions of a real passion ! Express momentary bursts of feeling in it ! 
I should sooner expect to write pathetic Axes or pour forth extempore 
Eggs and Altars! " He defined the sonnet as " a small poem, in which 
some lonely feeling is developed," and added, "Those Sonnets ap- 
pear to me the most exquisite, in which moral Sentiments, Affec- 
tions, or Feelings, are deduced from, and associated with, the scenery 
of Nature." ^ Yet his practice by no means conformed to his theory. 
One of his poems uses the Petrarchan arrangement of rimes, and 
others come as near it as do those of Miss Seward at which he sneers; 
he employs the Shakespearean system nine times, and unquestion- 
ably consulted some standard other than "his own convenience." 
A considerable number of his pieces are without that development 
of a lonely feeling which he declared indispensable, and still more of 
them lack the association with the scenery of nature which he 
stressed. These inconsistencies deepen the impression made by the 
poems themselves, as well as by their astonishing "Introduction," 
that Coleridge had not thought his ideas on the subject through, and 
this because he did not regard the form as one of much dignity or of 
great possibilities, and therefore did not put his best efforts into it, 
as Wordsworth did. 

One of the forty copies that Coleridge made of Bowles's first vol- 
ume he may well have given to his schoolmate, Charles Lamb, who 
shared some of his friend's enthusiasm for the Fourteen Sonnets. 
Lamb's own quatorzains, to be sure, seldom deal with nature or 

' " Introduction to the Sonnets," Poems (1797), 71-3. 



THE SONNET: LAMB — LLOYD 517 

exhibit what he termed the "tender plaintiveness " of Bowles,^ but 
are more like Coleridge's when these are free from turgidity and 
melancholy. As the two friends wrote sonnets together and dis- 
cussed one another's productions freely, each undoubtedly affected 
the work of the other. The "ewe lambs " of the gentle EHa, however, 
show the beginning of a force which has since become very power- 
ful, — that of Elizabethan literature, to which Lamb was devoted. 
Not for many years had the English sonnet contained such lines as 
Methinks how dainty sweet it were, reclin'd. . . . 

The Lord of Life shakes off his drowsihed. 
And 'gins to sprinkle on the earth below 
Those rays that from his shaken locks do flow. 

And surely Lamb had in mind the Faerie Queene (though not the 
Amorelti, it should be observed) when he wrote, 

Was it some sweet device of Faery 

That mock'd my steps with many a lonely glade, 

And fancied wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid? ^ 

Four of his sonnets are also Elizabethan in being love-poems. These 
features, however, disappear from his later productions, which are 
called forth by occasions or addressed to friends, and which, with 
their frequent run-over lines, their simplicity and naturalness of ex- 
pression, are much nearer to ordinary speech than any preceding 
sonnets had been. A few of the thirty-live he wrote are refreshingly 
playful and whimsical, and one or two have the Miltonic sweep, but 
most are marked by quiet distinction, earnestness, and sincerity. 
They had practically no effect on the development of the genre, for 
they have never found many readers ; yet Lamb was far more of an 
innovator than writers like Bowles, whose influence has been great. 
Intimately associated with Coleridge and Lamb in friendship and 
in sonneteering was Charles Lloyd, another of the attractive young 
poets who developed insanity in later years. To the volume the 
three friends published together Lloyd contributed several poems, 
which reveal such a fine sensitiveness to natural beauty and are so 
little known that I am tempted to quote one: 

' Letter to Coleridge, Oct. 28, 1796. Lamb left Christ's Hospital within two months 
after Coleridge discovered Bowles; but to 3'outhful enthusiasm two months is a long 
time. He certainly admired Bowles at first (cf. his letters to Coleridge of June 8-10, 
Nov. 14, and Dec. 10, 1796); he acknowledges taking one line from his sonnet To a 
Friend (letter to Coleridge, May 24 or 31?, 1796), and may have been otherwise influ- 
enced by him, although Nov. 13, 1798, he wrote to Robert Lloyd of "the race of sonnet 
writers and complainers, Bowles's and Charlotte Smiths, and all that tribe, who can 
see no joys but what are past." 

2 The quotations are the opening lines of three of the sonnets. 



5l8 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Scotland! when thinking on each heathy hill 
O'er whose bleak breast the billowy vapours sweep, 
While sullen winds imprison'd murmur deep 
Mid' their dim caves, such thoughts my bosom fill, 
I cannot chuse but sigh! Oft wandering wild 
I've trac'd thy torrents to their haunted source. 
Whence down some huge rock with fantastic course, 
Their sheeted whiteness pouring, they beguil'd 
The meek dishearten'd One, in solitude 
Who sought relief. Beneath some aged tree 
Thy white cots dimly seen yielded to me 
Solace most sweet : nor seldom have I view'd 
Their low thatch wishfully, and paus'd to bless 
The uncultur'd children of lone Quietness! ^ 

The pensive sentiment in the presence of nature which marks these 
lines and the best of their author's other one hundred and six quator- 
zains would point to Bowles, even if extracts from his poetry did not 
appear on two of Lloyd's title-pages and if several of the poems did 
not, like those of Bowles, describe a castle or other ruin, a lake or a 
river. Some of them, however, are closer to Lamb's, with which they 
were published. Many are injured by diffuseness and by the revela- 
tion of their author's weak, morbidly introspective personality. 
Although the eighth line is sometimes run-over and the arrangement 
of rimes Petrarchesque rather than Petrarchan, Lloyd held that 
Shakespearean quatorzains like Charlotte Smith's were not sonnets .^ 
Still another friend of Coleridge and Lamb was influenced by the 
Fourteen Sonnets. Soon after a third edition of the volume appeared, 
their author tells us, "two young gentlemen, strangers, one a par- 
ticularly handsome and pleasing youth, . . . spoke in high commen- 
dation" of the work to the publisher and "expressed a desire to 
have some poems printed in the same type and form." ' The young 
men were Robert Lovell and Robert Southey, and their volume, 
which came out the following year, 1795, resembled its predecessor in 
other respects than in type and form. It contained sixteen sonnets 
marked by the pensive sentiment, the fondness for ruins, the descrip- 
tions of nature harmonized with the writer's mood, that distinguish 
the work of Bowles, to which, indeed, it is closer than is Coleridge's. 
Southey himself made no secret of this obligation. Towards the 
close of his life he praised his fellow-poet's "sweet and unsophisti- 
cated style; upon which," he adds, "I endeavoured, now almost 
forty years ago, to form my own." ^ Although he composed sonnets 

' Poems by Coleridge, Lamb, and Lloyd (ijgj), 170. * Nugae Canorae (1819), 168. 

' Scenes and Shadows of Days Departed (1837), p. xlv. 

* Letter to Bowles, July 30, 1832. Cf. the preface to Southey's Poetical Works 



THE SONNET: SOUTHEY 519 

at intervals throughout the forty years, most of those he wrote came 
before 1800. The later productions, though much better, are as a 
rule of the same type as the first, — quiet, pleasing descriptions ex- 
pressed naturally, but, like Coleridge's, usually tagged with a moral. 
All show how much the province of the sonnet was widening; for six 
are vigorous attacks on the slave-trade, one is a humorous address to 
a roast goose, four are on love, and four seem to be parodies of the 
Delia Cruscan effusions. Their arrangements of rimes, which are 
many and very irregular, seem to be dictated by convenience rather 
principle, and their run-over lines and disregard of the pauses and 
turns give the impression of blank verse. Of Lovell, who is said to 
have died the year after his poems appeared, almost nothing further 
is known than that Southey published three of his sonnets posthu- 
mously, one of which, like one of Warton's, is on Stonehenge. 

With the work of Bowles and his followers the sonnet reaches a 
parting of the ways, and pauses for a moment between the type 
which was prevalent in the eighteenth century and that which was 
to predominate in the nineteenth. With Wordsworth it crosses the 
threshold and enters the new realm. Before following it into this 
lovelier and far better-known region, we may turn and look back over 
the road by which we have come. 

From such a retrospect three classes of sonnets stand out, — • the 
Miltonic, the Hayley-Smith- Williams type, and that used by Bowles, 
the last being a combination of the other two with particular empha- 
sis on nature and melancholy. Widely as extreme instances of these 
types differ from one another, each class taken as a whole has much 
more in common with the other two than with the productions of the 
Elizabethans or the Italians. Nearly all are bound together and dis- 
tinguished from the earlier quatorzains in being called forth by 
some actual happening, occasion, place, or person, instead of being 
spun largely out of the poet's inner consciousness. They are also 
united by their seriousness of purpose, and by their authors' inten- 
tions, however poorly carried out, to be direct, simple, dignified. 
Consequently, Capel Lofft could write in 1809: "No subject worthy 

(1837), vol. i, p. ix: "I am conscious also of having derived much benefit at one time 
from Cowper, and more from Bowles; for which, and for the delight which his poems 
gave me at an age when we are most susceptible of such delight, my good friend [Bowles] 
. . . will allow me to make this grateful and cordial acknowledgement." As he tells us 
{ib. viii) that Warton was another of the poets on whose work he modelled his early 
verses, and as he took a particular interest in Bampfylde (see his Vision of Judge- 
ment, section xi, and p. 506 above), it is likely that these writers, whose sonnets 
resemble his own, also influenced him. 



520 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

of poetry is so great and comprehensive, as not to have been with 
becoming dignity expressed in this form. . . . And it is the glory of 
the Sonnet to add that it has most rarely been disgraced by any un- 
worthy subject." ^ Even Hayley, Polwhele, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Robin- 
son, and Miss Seward gave their best efforts to the form; they did 
not trifle with it. Their quatorzains are no more ridiculous and 
empty than everything else they wrote; they tried to say some- 
thing, — the trouble was they had nothing to say. As for the Delia 
Cruscans, it was not the sonnet that debauched them but they it, 
and it was far from being their favorite verse-form. 

The attributes which the eighteenth-century quatorzains have in 
common seem to be derived from Milton, and from him also came 
the uses to which the form was put. With love, the chief concern of 
poetasters, it rarely dealt,^ and until 1784 it was almost untouched 
by sentimentality. For a considerable time it was employed princi- 
pally in addresses to persons; and, although this use waned as pensive 
description became the vogue, eighteen of Coleridge's effusions are 
''on eminent characters " or addressed to individuals. In this respect 
also Milton pointed the way, but his example was the more eagerly 
followed because other kinds of verse were largely given over to ab- 
stractions. The quatorzain was likewise popular for occasional 
poetry. For celebrating a visit to a friend or a beautiful spot, a 
birthday, the publication of a book, or similar events of general or 
merely personal interest, it became in the later eighteenth century 
the favorite form. With nature it had been concerned from the time 
of its revival; Gray, Mason, Warton, Polwhele, Bampfylde, War- 
wick, Brydges, and perhaps Russell and Jackson, as well as Miss 
Seward, Miss Williams, and Mrs. Smith, all dwelt upon the beauties 
of the country long before Bowles began to write. The increased at- 
tention given to nature, which after 1790 became the principal 
theme, is, however, not peculiar to the sonnet, but is characteristic 
of all the poetry of the time, even blank verse. 

It might be supposed from the thousands of quatorzains written, 
from the praise bestowed upon the form, and from the partiality 
many evinced for it, that this style of verse was popular in the 
eighteenth century. To be sure, it never has been really popular, it 
is not now; all one would expect is that it should be admired by the 
lovers of good literature and recognized by poets and critics as one 
of our best verse-forms, that its position should no more be ques- 

^ Brydges, Censura Literaria (1809), x. 83. 

* Aside from the forty-three in Mrs. Robinson's sequence, Sappho and Phaon, I have 
noted very few sonnets on love, but I have by no means examined all eighteenth- 
century quatorzains with this point in view. 



THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SONNET 52 1 

tioned than that of blank verse. But in the eighteenth century the 
position of each was questioned, and the little lute of fourteen strings 
excited something of the same hostihty, and in much the same quar- 
ters, as that roused by the organ-tones of the greater instrument. 
Dr. Johnson's critical bludgeon fell upon it several times. "Of the 
best" of Milton's sonnets, he wrote, "it can only be said that they 
are not bad, and perhaps only the eighth and the twenty-first are 
truly entitled to this slender commendation. The fabrick of a sonnet 
however adapted to the ItaHan language, has never succeeded in 
ours." When Hannah More "expressed a wonder that the poet who 
had written Paradise Lost should write such poor Sonnets," he re- 
marked, "Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus 
from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones." ^ 
Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of the evolutionist, "had in general 
no taste for Sonnets, and particularly disHked Milton's; ^ and John 
Pinkerton affirmed in 1782 that "the stated form and measure" of 
the quatorzain were "so disgustingly similar" that he believed "no 
man of genius would now write twenty in a Ufe time." ^ About the 
same time George Steevens declared the sonnet to be a "metrical 
whim . . . composed in the highest strain of affectation, pedantry, 
circumlocution, and nonsense." ^ 

From the reviews arose an almost unbroken chorus of condemna- 
tion. The Critical held Hugh Downman's attempts "to revive the 
antiquated sonnet" to be "convincing evidence" of his tendency to- 
wards affectation.^ The Monthly declared: "The English language 
can boast of few good Sonnets. They are in general harsh, formal, 
and uncouth." « According to the New London Magazine, the qua- 
torzain was in 1789 "in a state of almost rusticated barbarism, or 
refined absurdity," for "the metaphysic rubbish that . . . still ap- 
pears under the title of Sonnets" seems "hard laboured, and rapidly 
sinking to the sable valley of oblivion";^ and so late as 1803 the 
Annual Review asserted, "Sonnets ... at best are but stiff diffi- 

1 "Milton," in Lives (ed. Hill), i. 169-70; Boswell's Johnson (ed. Hill), iv. 305. See 
also Johnson's Dictionary, "Sonnet." 

^ Anna Seward, Memoirs of Dr. Darwin (1804), 386. 

' Letters of Literature (1785), 51. Ten years later, April 26, 1792, Cowper remarked 

to Lady Hesketh, "The Hills, I know, dislike sonnets For my own part I like them 

much, when they are on subjects proper to them; such, I mean, as are best expressed 
in a close sententious manner." 

* Shakespeare's Plays and Poems (ed. James Boswell, 1821), xx. 358-9, note. 

s xxvi. 198 (1768); cf. Ivii. 6-7 (1784), and new arr., ii. 174 (1791)- Yet in 1792 
(new arr., v. 250) it speaks very well of a volume of sonnets. 

« Ixxi. 368 (1784); cf. Ixxxi. 81, 366, and enl. ed., xviii. 429-30. xxiv. 17, xxix. 361-4, 
xxxvi. 145-6. 

^ v. 212. 



522 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

cult trifles, and surely more remote from the simplicity which they 
often affect than any other class of poems in our language." ^ In 
1786 the Chambers-Rees Cyclopaedia said that Milton's sonnet to 
Lawes, though one of his best, "shews how difficult and unnatural 
the construction of this species of poem is in the English language " ; ^ 
and in 1802 Richard Mant, who, as editor of Thomas Warton's 
poems, should have been favorable to the form, called it " a species of 
poetry, foreign to the genius of the English language, and singularly 
liable to stiffness." ^ We know that at the beginning of the century 
Wordsworth held it ''egregiously absurd," ^ and that in 1827, fearing 
others were of the same opinion, he admonished the critic to "scorn 
not the sonnet." Accordingly we are not surprised to find Sir Eger- 
ton Brydges saying in 1807, "It has been the fashion of late to 
despise Sonnets, more especially those, which, on account of the 
technical repetition, and contexture, of the rhymes, are called 
legitimate." ^ This last clause suggests that there were those who 
distinguished between sonnets, enjoying one type and disliking an- 
other. As to this discrimination there can be no question. It will be 
remembered that Coleridge, with whom the quatorzain had "been 
ever a favorite species of composition," found no words strong 
enough to express his contempt for the Petrarchan measure. Char- 
lotte Smith wrote, "I am told, and I read it as the opinion of very 
good judges, that the legitimate Sonnet is illy calculated for our 
language." ^ This widely-held opinion Miss Seward characterized 
as an "unmeaning assertion of pedants"; yet she admitted that she 
often had to combat it, as well she might, for at least three of her 
friends entertained it, one of them holding the legitimate sonnet as 
her "supreme aversion." ^ 

The reasons for such aversion are not far to seek. Poets found the 
Petrarchan form very difficult, and readers felt that too much was 

1 ii. 564. "C-T-0-" wrote to the Gentleman's Magazine in 1786 (Ivi. 135), "Ed- 
wards's Sonnet upon a family picture, has as much merit as any Sonnet, perhaps, can 
be entitled to." 

2 Article, "Sonnet." This sentence was not in the 1728 and 1751 editions. 
^ Vol. i, p. cliv. 

* See below, p. 529, n. 2. 
^ Poems (4th ed.), 213. 

* Preface to Elegiac Sonnets (1784). The Monthly Review said the same in 1784, and 
again in 1785 and 1789 (bcxi. 368, Ixxiii. 306, Ixxxi. 366), as did Nathan Drake in 1798 
{Literary Hours, 3d ed., 1804, i. 1 13-14). In 1802 the legitimate forni was strongly 
opposed in the Critical Review (new arr. , xxxiv. 393) , as it had been in the Universal 
Magazine ten years earlier (xci. 409, 413); and in 1803 George Henderson wrote that 
the Petrarchan form was discarded by "almost the whole of those which have attained 
any popularity in the English" (Petrarca, p. xxx). 

^ Letters, i. 172, 186, 238, 261; ii. 255-60. 



THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SONNET 523 

usually sacrificed for the sake of it, that it made the quatorzain — to 
use the adjectives most often hurled at it — unnatural, affected, arti- 
ficial, obscure, harsh, formal, uncouth, and (in diction) antiquated 
and quaint.^ Even Brydges, an enthusiastic imitator of Milton's 
"Petrarchian stanzas," recognized that he "was not able to conquer 
the stiffness, which this sort of metre generally causes," and praised 
Charlotte Smith's efforts for "that freedom and ease, which it is 
scarce possible to preserve while entangled by the complicated rules 
of the ancient sonnet." ^ In consequence of this general dissatisfac- 
tion, the preference for the Petrarchan model fell off steadily as 
the genre grew in popularity. This decline will be seen from the fol- 
lowing table, which indicates very roughly the distribution of the 
eighteenth-century quatorzains that were published in books: ^ 

Petrarchan Shakespearean Spenserian Irregular 

1740-60 (20 years) 73 o 7 20 

1760-80 " " 130 27 2 348 

1780-90 (10 years) 234 154 7 448 

1790-1800 " " 199 270 I 582 

Total 636 451 17 1398 

In at least one respect this table is misleading; for the first column 
contains only poems that conform to a strict, probably an over- 
strict, interpretation of the phrase "Petrarchan rime-scheme," one 
that would exclude a considerable number of the sonnets written by 
Milton and by Petrarch himself. Nor does it make any allowance 
for misunderstandings of the legitimate arrangement (such as that 
which throws sixty-seven of Miss Seward's quatorzains into the last 
column), or for any slight departure from it. Assuming that one- 
sixth of the irregular quatorzains were intended to be and in the main 
are legitimate, we should have about 870 Petrarchesque, as against 
17 Spenserian, 450 Shakespearean, and 1165 irregular quatorzains. 

> Two sorts of words impress the reader, — the inflated Latinic expressions, in 
which Miss Seward is the greatest offender ("sons of Phoebus deem My verse Aonian," 
she writes), and such antiquated words as "wont," "whilom," "what time," "erst," 
"yon," "massy," "approof," "ween," "sprent." See also p. 65 above. 

2 Poems (4th ed., 1807), 214, 213. 

2 This table is not, and could not well be made, accurate in detail. It does not in- 
clude the considerable number of quatorzains that I have been unable to see or the 
hundreds that were published in magazines only. Furthermore, since all the poems of a 
single author are put in the period in which he began to write, some of those that are 
listed in the earlier periods really belong in the later. On the other hand, when the 
date of composition is unknown, as often happens, the poems are placed according to 
the time of printing, which may be long after; hence some of those listed in the later 
periods really belong in the earlier. This balancing of errors will, I hope, make the 
figures, relatively to one another, not far wrong, except for the correction to be noted 
in the text. 



524 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Aside from the exceedingly small number of Spenserian sonnets/ 
the most striking thing about these figures is the slowness with which 
the Shakespearean arrangement won favor. During the first forty 
years this rime-sequence is rarely found, and not until 1790 did the 
pieces employing it equal in number those using the Petrarchan. 
These facts are the more impressive because the Italian system is 
much the more difficult, because its difiiculties loomed large to 
Charlotte Smith and her contemporaries, and because it was widely 
and severely criticized. The popularity of the Shakespearean ar- 
rangement in the last decade of the century was not due to the influ- 
ence of Shakespeare, for his quatorzains were not admired at the 
time nor was their rime-scheme known by his name or justified 
by his practice. This particular structure seems, in fact, to have had 
no advocates and not to have been distinguished, by those who dis- 
cussed the subject, from the irregular forms; but it had the dignity 
of conforming to some system and the advantage of being easy to 
write. All things considered, therefore, the legitimate arrangement 
was much more widely used than one would expect. In other mat- 
ters of form there was less divergence; for by the constant use of 
run-over lines and internal pauses, as well as by the frequent neglect 
of the full stop and the turn between octave and sestet, most poets 
kept about as close to Milton's usage as they well could, apparently 
sharing the opinion of Miss Seward that the prosody of the sonnet 
should be practically that of blank verse. 

In the course of a study like this, one comes naturally to assume 
that most persons of the period held definite and fairly vigorous 
opinions regarding the structure and rime-scheme of the sonnet. 
But such an assumption finds little warrant. There were, to be sure, 
those whose decided ideas regarding the poem and the arrangement 
of its rimes put them into one of four classes: that of Johnson and 
Darwin, who disliked all quatorzains; that of Hay ley and Brydges, 
who admired any that were passable regardless of structure ; that of 
Coleridge and Mrs. Smith, who were averse to the legitimate type 
but enjoyed the irregular, particularly if it inclined towards senti- 
mental melancholy ; and that of Miss Seward and other ardent Mil- 
tom'ans, who held a lofty conception of the poem and looked askance 
at any system except what they believed to be the Petrarchan. Yet 
it may be suspected that the great body of readers belonged to still 
another class, — those who had no attitude whatever, who neither 

* Three of the Spenserian type were composed between 1755 and 1770 by Bishop 
Percy, author of the ReUques (see Miss Clarissa Rinaker on "Percy as a Sonneteer," 
Modern Language Notes, xxxv. 56-8). 



THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SONNET 525 

knew nor cared anything about pauses or rime-schemes, to whom a 
sonnet was merely a rather stiff, dull poem of some twelve, fourteen, 
or sixteen lines. 

Nor is this indifference hard to understand, for few eighteenth- 
century quatorzains would be likely to make a deep impression or to 
aid in estabHshing the form securely in the pubHc favor. Of the three 
thousand or thereabouts that were produced hardly more than thirty 
deserve to live, for, although many have good lines or quatrains, 
few are good throughout. Furthermore, aside from Edwards's, 
less than fifty (scarcely any of which show real inspiration) were 
printed between 1700 and 1775; and many of the best — those of 
Russell, Bowles, Cowper, Coleridge, Southey, Lamb, and Lloyd — 
appeared after 1788, when they could have but slightly affected the 
eighteenth century. Besides, some of the choicest productions of the 
period, Russell's, Bampfylde's, and Lloyd's, which might have done 
not a little to help the reputation of the form, had a very limited cir- 
culation.^ When, towards 1790, things were at last looking better 
and volumes of good sonnets were beginning to appear, the blight of 
Delia Cruscanism struck the long-suft'ering quatorzain, bringing in 
its wake a new defamatory adjective, "trivial," which was so often 
dwelt upon that the other epithets tended to sink into the back- 
ground. Throughout the century there had undoubtedly been 
persons who thought the poem a mere trifle, for Miss Seward and 
Wordsworth held this opinion at first; ^ but there is little evidence of 
such a view before 1 790. After that, however, it is to be encountered 
frequently. On at least three occasions between 1797 and 1799 the 
Monthly Review spoke of the sonnet as a poem "of which the highest 
merit is elegant trifling," as one of "the lighter kinds of poetry " 
marked by "elegance of . . . language" and "harmony of . , . num- 
bers" rather than by loftier qualities, and as "at best ... a trifle." ' 
In 1 80 1 Alexander Thomson referred to "those who are inclined to 
consider the sonnet on a level, in laborious trifling, with the anagram 
and acrostich," ^ a belief that seems to have been the accepted one 
so late as 1807, when Capel Lofft wrote, 

^ These facts probably explain William Belsham's omission of the sonnet from his 
discussion of verse-fonns: Essays, 1789, essay xii (xxxiii in the 1799 edition). 

* See Miss Seward's Letters, ii. 257; and below, p. 529, n. 2. 

^ Enlarged ed., xxiii. 460, xxiv. 17, xxix. 364. The Annual Review used almost the 
same words in 1803 (ii. 564), "Sonnets are at best stiff, difficult trifles." To this accu- 
sation George Henderson could answer only, "Yet to trifle with skill is no common 
art" (Petrarca, 1803, p. xxxii). 

* Preface to his Sonnets, Odes, etc., quoted from Crit. Rev., new arr., xxxvi. no. 
Thomson added, "Amatory, descriptive, and sentimental subjects, have hitherto been 
almost the only topics on which the sonnet has been accustomed to dwell." 



526 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Long injur'd sonnet! whom the Crowd arraigns; 
And as a mere frivoHty disdains, 
An empty toy of many a tinkUng line; 
Incapable of Great and High Design. ' 

The hostility that greeted the poem in some quarters, like the 
enthusiasm it aroused in others, can be understood only when we 
realize that its revival was one of those manifestations of the fer- 
ment termed romanticism which were being hailed by some and 
decried by others. Gray, Warton, Bowles, and Coleridge accepted 
the sonnet as instinctively as Johnson criticized it. The autocrat of 
letters disliked it just as he disHked the rhapsodies of Ossian, the 
short pieces of Milton, the odes of Gray and Warton, and all blank 
verse. The critical reviews, which looked askance at the sonnet, 
were also, it may be recalled, inclined to be hostile to unrimed poems, 
and pointed out with considerable justice the poor quality of most of 
the pieces written in both types of verse. And so, in general, it was 
the conservatives who were antagonistic to sonnets and the pro- 
gressives who favored them ; in other words, it was the old struggle 
for poetic freedom which was carried on throughout the eighteenth 
century. Significantly enough, among the persons using the form 
between 1740 and 1820 were all the poets of note (and many long 
since forgotten) who were incUned to romanticism, but none of those 
opposed to it. 

This groping for freedom, life, and color which we name roman- 
ticism was in large measure responsible for the sudden reappearance 
of the sonnet in English. Presumably, it was this that led the anony- 
mous contributor to the London Magazine, the Yorkes, Gray, Stil- 
lingfleet, and Edwards, independently but within a few years of one 
another, to employ an instrument covered with the dust and rust of 
nearly eighty years. These writers seem either to have come upon 
the sonnet accidentally or to have found it as they sought, perhaps 
unconsciously, for fresher and more varied measures. Different 
writers probably discovered it in different places, — Gray, for ex- 
ample, in Petrarch; but we know that the contributor to the London 
Magazine, the Yorkes, and Stillingfleet, not to mention Brydges, 
Cowper, and others who wrote later, got it from Milton. Nor can it 
be a mere coincidence that in the same years this search was leading 
the same men and others to Milton's octosyllabics, monody, masque, 
and unrimed stanza, which were then making their charm felt for the 
first time. Writers who were finding in these pieces a revelation of 
what poetry might be, could hardly fail to be stirred by the sonnets 

' La Corona, sonnet xiv (in Laura, end of vol. v). 



THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SONNET 527 

in the same volume, and, if they imitated the other poems, would be 
likely to copy these. In part, therefore, the revival of the sonnet was 
another phase of the Allegro-Penseroso-Comus-Lycidas movement; 
at any rate, without that movement, and without the general popu- 
larity of Milton and the admiration which his "Petrarchian stan- 
zas" themselves aroused, the revival would probably not have come 
when it did or have enlisted in its service all the important and most 
of the minor poets of the time. 

Furthermore, it would almost certainly have taken on another 
character. If the men who first interested themselves in the form, 
and many of those who adopted it later, had not been inspired 
directly by Milton, their productions would undoubtedly have been 
less desirable. Edwards's work, to be sure, may possibly represent 
the eighteenth-century quatorzain unaffected by that inspiration; 
but in view of the other literature of the time it seems more likely 
that effusions of the Smith-Polwhele-Hayley variety are what the 
century would have produced had it been left to itself. Although 
Milton's influence was towards the stiff and the unnatural, yet with- 
out his lofty example and the stimulus offered by the difficulties of 
the legitimate arrangement of rimes, which he used, the quatorzain 
would in all probability soon have deteriorated into lugubrious or 
prattlmg vapidity. 

The number of eighteenth-century sonneteers who felt his influ- 
ence was so considerable that a student of the subject remarked in 
1803, "Milton has been studied and imitated by almost every one 
who has resorted to this kind of composition." ^ Not only do Charles 
Yorke, Hardinge, Brydges, Miss Seward, and others declare Milton 
to be their model, but in Warton's and Mason's case there is the evi- 
dence of other Miltonic poems, in Bampfylde's and Cary's that of 
borrowed phrases, and in Cowper's that of a recent translation of his 
"idol's " Italian sonnets. Were it worth while, similar evidence could 
be advanced regarding lesser men; but there is danger in this search 
for something tangible, definite, and beyond dispute, since it is apt 

1 Henderson, Petrarca (1803), p. xxiii. To be sure, there were those then, as there 
are to-day, who did not care for Milton's sonnets. Dr. Johnson and Erasmus Darwin, 
as we have seen, did not; and the Critical Review, which in 1768 spoke of them as 'fail- 
ures' (xxvi. 198), thought sixteen years later that the loss of them "might be endured 
with patience and resignation" (Ivii. 6). The Monthly Review said in 1795, " The failure 
of Milton in this species of poetry has often been mentioned and allowed" (enl. ed., 
xviii. 429; cf . xxiv. 17, xxix. 362, and first series, Ixxxi. 81) ; yet on one occasion at least 
it spoke favorably of them (1783, Ixviii. 46-7). "J. T." admitted in the Universal 
Magazine in 1792 that he read "as a task" the sonnets of the "great master of the epic 
lyre," and thought them far inferior to Charlotte Smith's (xci. 408-14, and cf. p. 503 
above) . 



528 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

to blind us to the fact that Edwards's productions, which he says 
were not affected by Milton's, as well as Bowles's and Russell's, re- 
garding the sources of which we know nothing, are nearer the Puritan 
stanzas than those of Miss Seward, Hardinge, and Brydges, who con- 
sciously adopted these poems as their model. Declarations Hke Miss 
Seward's and Brydges's are valuable principally as showing that 
poets did copy Milton's sonnets, and as warranting the belief that, if 
all of them had left autobiographies or volumes of letters, we should 
have more such confessions. But even if we did possess many more 
we should not have reached the most significant phase of the matter. 
An influence is Hkely to be most pervasive and vital when the writer 
is no longer conscious of its existence and the reader has difficulty in 
putting his finger on evidences of it; that is, when the manner and 
thought of the master have become so familiar to the disciple as to 
be used instinctively. This was not the case with the sonnet when 
it was first revived. At that time writers deliberately and somewhat 
painfully tried to follow in the steps of their guide; but in the last 
quarter of the century "the sonnet" had to a great extent come to 
mean "the Miltonic sonnet," and this even among persons who 
knew nothing and cared nothing about the poems that had wrought 
the change. Milton's innovations had become assimilated. 

This survey of the eighteenth-century sonnet has been like the 
slow and laborious ascent of a thickly- wooded mountain. There 
have been not a few graceful ferns, shy flowers, dark brooks brawling 
under lichen-covered trees, and now and then a soul-cheering out- 
look on beauty; yet as a whole the ascent has been so steep and 
rocky and the view so restricted that when we come upon the son- 
nets of Wordsworth's first great years, particularly the stirring 
trumpet-calls for liberty, it is like stepping from a rough, gloomy 
path out upon a sunny summit affording prospects far and wide 
over great stretches of noble country with glimpses of the ocean 
beyond shimmering in a golden haze. So tremendous is the con- 
trast and so inspiriting the sight that we stand before it bareheaded 
and speechless. 

It is folly to pretend that Wordsworth's sonnets are an evolution 
from those of his immediate predecessors; he turned to other sources 
for his inspiration, his models, and his conception of the form. Be- 
tween him and them is a great gulf fixed, which can be bridged only 
by his own personality. To be sure, since many of his quatorzains 
are devoted to nature, or were written on picturesque spots during 
journeys and thus deal with castles, abbeys, and ruins of past gran- 



THE SONNET: WORDSWORTH 529 

deur, they may be indebted to Warton and Bowles. Yet, as his 
other poems are on similar subjects, he probably chose his themes 
instinctively and would have used them if Bowles and the rest had 
never written. In his treatment of them he certainly owes nothing 
to his predecessors; for, instead of seeing his own sentimental melan- 
choly writ large over hill and plain, he paints nature with epic 
breadth, emphasizing its significance not simply to himself but 
to all mankind as the great source of spiritual power. We know 
that he read and thought well of most of the sonneteers we have 
been considering, but it is doubtful if his work was appreciably , 

affected by any of them. It was to Milton and Milton only that he ^ 

was indebted. 

We should know this from the poems themselves, but fortunately 
we have the additional testimony of his own words. *' One afternoon 
in 1801," he tells us, — it was really May 21, 1802, — "my sister 
read to me the sonnets of Milton. I had long been well acquainted 
with them, but I was particularly struck on that occasion with the 
dignified simplicity and majestic harmony that runs through most of 
them — in character so totally different from the Italian, and still 
more so from Shakespeare's fine sonnets. I took fire, if I may be 
allowed to say so, and produced three sonnets the same afternoon, 
the first I ever wrote, except an irregular one at school. " ^ This 
event, so important in the history of the sonnet, seems, character- 
istically, to have been appreciated at its full value by the poet him- 
self; for he referred to it nearly forty years later, and on another 
occasion said that this reading of Milton completely changed his 
attitude towards the form which he had previously thought "egre- 
giously absurd." ^ 

It was a memorable afternoon not simply because it gave Words- 
worth a respect for quatorzains and started him writing them, but 
because for the remainder of the year he wrote almost nothing but 

1 Fenwick note, prefixed to "I grieved for Buonaparte" {Poetical Works, ed. Knight, 
ii. 323). Wordsworth had really written a number of sonnets before this time, at least 
three of which are preserved, — those that begin " Calm is all nature," "She wept. — 
Life's purple tide began to flow," "Sweet was the walk" {ib. iv. 28-30). 

2 In the advertisement to the collected volume of his sonnets, published in 1838, he 
said: "My admiration of some of the Sonnets of Milton, first tempted me to write in 
that form. The fact is . . . mentioned ... as a public acknowledgment of one of the in- 
numerable obligations, which, as a Poet and a Man, I am under to our great fellow- 
countryman." He wrote to Landor, April 20, 1822: "I used to think it [the sonnet] 
egregiously absurd, though the greatest poets since the revival of literature have written 
in it. Many years ago my sister happened to read to me the sonnets of Milton, which 
I could at that time repeat; but somehow or other I was singularly struck with the 
style of harmony, and the gravity, and republican austerity of those compositions." 



530 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

sonnets, — and such sonnets ! Included in the nineteen are those on 
Westminster Bridge, the extinction of the Venetian republic, 
Toussaint L'Ouverture, and Milton, as well as the ones that begin 
"Fair Star of evening. Splendour of the west," "It is a beauteous 
evening, calm and free," "Inland, within a hollow vale, I stood," 
"O Friend! I know not which way I must look," "Great men have 
been among us," "It is not to be thought of," and "When I have 
borne in memory." These poems, which Wordsworth rarely sur- 
passed, not only were written under the immediate inspiration of 
Milton's but were obviously patterned after them. Their loftiness 
and nobility, their intensity of feeling, their directness, masculine 
vigor, and sonorous breadth, suggest as do those of no other writer 
the "soul-animating strains" that inspired them. 

Furthermore, like his master but unlike most of his other prede- 
cessors, Wordsworth put into the sonnet his very life-blood, the 
noblest and deepest there was in him. In 1802, when he began to 
use the form, he was "opprest" and 'knew not which way he must 
look for comfort.' The cause of liberty to which he was passionately 
devoted seemed everywhere to be losing ground; England and France 
were rapidly drifting towards war, and he was torn between his love 
for each and between the disappointments, hopes, and fears that each 
caused him. At this crisis of his life, when he was shaken to his very 
foundations and many of his radical enthusiasms and theories were 
crumbling about him, it was the sonnet that he chose as an outlet, 
pouring into it the soul not only of his own difficulties but of the 
struggle that was convulsing all Europe. This was new. Since 
Milton "caught the sonnet from the dainty hand of love," no one 
had packed such intensity into it or devoted it to matters of such 
world-wide significance. It had, as we have seen, become to a great 
extent a personal poem, in which, even when picturing nature, the 
poet generally kept himself in the foreground. It was used principally 
for addresses to friends, for the expression of grief, and for the cele- 
brating of occasions. For such purposes as these Wordsworth had 
made little use of verse, and, as he was repelled by the difficulties of 
the form, had composed few sonnets before 1800. His 'taking fire' 
at the reading of the Puritan stanzas was probably due to a sudden 
realization of the similarity of his situation to that described in some 
of them, to his admiration for the part Milton had played in the 
earlier crisis, and to a sense of the suitability of the sonnets of his 
favorite poet for expressing his own difficulties and fears. As the 
lines beginning "Milton! thou should 'st be living at this hour" indi- 
cate, it was to the patriotism of the Latin secretary of the Common- 



THE SONNET: WORDSWORTH 53 1 

wealth, and to the sonnet as his vehicle for voicing this patriotism, 
that Wordsworth turned in his hour of need. 

In 1803, the year after his first great outburst of sonnet- writing, 
Wordsworth composed at least ten quatorzains, eight of which, in- 
cluding To the Men of Kent, In the Pass of Killicranky, and "These 
times strike monied worldlings with dismay," were on liberty. Dur- 
ing 1804 and 1805 he wrote only one (aside from three translations), 
but in 1806 about twenty, among which are "Nuns fret not," the 
four that treat with lofty simplicity of "personal talk," and the 
great one, "The world is too much with us." Thereafter his average 
was almost ten a year, though none are credited to 181 7-18 and 
nearly two hundred to 1819-21. This last group includes the 
ecclesiastical and river-Duddon sequences, the greater part of which 
were, as might be expected, still-born. The calm decision, exe- 
cuted with remorseless fidelity, to devote a cycle of sonnets to 
the history of the church of England with an account of its rites, 
shows how far the poet had travelled since he first poured out his 
whole heart in a few impassioned quatorzains. For his early ardor 
had soon died down: within five years of his catching fire Words- 
worth's sonnets had become noticeably less sonorous and vigorous, 
had grown quieter, simpler, and more pedestrian, — in a word, less 
Miltonic and more Wordsworthian. This change was due in part to 
the natural loss of youthful imagination and vigor (a loss particu- 
larly marked in the lake poet), in part to the passing of the crisis 
of his life with the resulting decrease in the intensity of his feelings 
about current events, and in part to the weakening of the impulse 
that Milton had given him. But in no slight degree it came from his 
greater control over the tool he handled; for the facility he gained 
from writing sonnets so dulled the stimulus, the challenge, which the 
difficulties of the form had at first offered him, that he seems at last 
to have produced quatorzains on any occasion or none, and with as 
little effort as if he were dictating a letter. When he had thus ceased 
to exert himself over them, he found any difficulty they presented 
irksome, and as a result grew increasingly careless as to the arrange- 
ment of rimes, often violating the rules that he himself laid down. 
In the first six years of his sonnet activity, during which his best 
work was produced, thirty-seven of his octaves are legitimate, twenty 
have the three-rimed form, ahhaacca, and only one is irregular. 
From 1808 to 182 1 one hundred and fifty-eight are legitimate, one 
hundred and thirty-three have the three rimes, and nine are irregu- 
lar. From 1822 to 1846 sixty-one are legitimate, eighty-one use the 
three rimes, and the same number are irregular; but in the last six 



532 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

years of this period irregular forms occur in more than half of the 
poems. In his first great year Wordsworth did not employ the con- 
cluding couplet at all, and he allowed it but four times in the next 
five years; but thereafter in this matter, as in his octaves, he grew 
more and more lax, until from 1822 to 1846 the couplet-ending be- 
came a favorite with him.^ Yet never, even when he was least careful, 
did he employ either the Shakespearean or the Spenserian form.- 
As regards run-over lines, internal pauses, and the failure to observe 
the prescribed pauses there was no change: throughout his life he 
conformed so closely to Milton's usage that many of his poems read 
like blank verse. The division into octave and sestet he usually kept, 
but in his early as well as his later work he often ran the eighth line 
into the ninth. 

Such was his practice. His theory was in some respects quite dif- 
ferent, being at once stricter and more liberal than would be sup- 
posed. ''Wordsworth does not approve of closing the sonnet with a 
couplet," Crabb Robinson noted, "and he holds it to be absolutely 
a vice to have a sharp turning at the end with an epigrammatic 
point." ' Yet he used the couplet-ending one hundred times. He 
also did not approve "of uniformly closing the second quatrain with 
a full stop, and of giving a turn to the thought in the terzines." * 
But as to the structure of the sonnet he confessed late in life to 
Alexander Dyce : ^ 

Though I have written so many, I have scarcely made up my own mind 
upon the subject. It should seem that the sonnet, like every other legiti- 
mate composition, ought to have a beginning, a middle, and an end; in 
other words, to consist of three parts. . . . But the frame of metre adopted 
by the Italians . , . seems to be — if not arbitrary— best fitted to a divi- 
sion of the sense into two parts, of eight and six lines each. Milton, how- 
ever, has not submitted to this; in the better half of his sonnets the sense 
does not close with the rhyme at the eighth line, but overflows into the 
second portion of the metre. Now it has struck me that this is not done 
merely to gratify the ear by variety and freedom of sound, but also to aid 
in giving that pervading sense of intense unity in which the excellence of 

' For most of these details, as well as for other matters relating to the present dis- 
cussion, I am indebted to Thomas Hutchinson's valuable "Note on the Wordsworthian 
Sonnet," in his reprint of Wordsworth's Poems in Two Volumes (1897), i. 208-26. The 
figures seem, however, not to total as they should or to agree with Mr. Hutchinson's 
other figures. 

2 He wrote one Shakespearean sonnet when at school, before the memorable after- 
noon in 1802; but, though he has one Spenserian octave, he seems never to have used 
the Spenserian form throughout. 

3 Diary, Jan. 26, 1836. * lb. 
* Undated letter of 1833, Letters, iii. 31-2. 



THE SONNET: WORDSWORTH 533 

the sonnet has always seemed to me mainly to consist. Instead of looking 
at this composition as a piece of architecture, making a whole out of three 
parts, I have been much in the habit of preferring the image of an orbicu- 
lar body, — a sphere or a dew-drop. ... I am well aware that a sonnet will 
often be found excellent, where the beginning, the middle, and the end are 
distinctly marked, and also where it is distinctly separated into two parts. 

The clearest impression made by this letter is that of lack of clear- 
ness in its writer's mind. It confirms the notion one gets from the 
poems themselves, that Wordsworth had never given the structure 
of the sonnet sufficient attention to think through his ideas regarding 
it.^ One would like some illustrations of the "sphere" form and of 
that with '' three parts." Did the latter mean anything so definite as 
the divisions at the end of the first and second quatrains, or, as seems 
more likely, was it merely vague theorizing? He seems not to have 
noticed that, although the Miltonic sonnet "overflows into the 
second portion," it usually has a bipartite structure, and, like the 
majority of quatorzains (including most of Wordsworth's own), has 
a turn earlier or later, even if there is none at the ninth line. Clearly, 
he objected to the marked pause and turn between the octave and 
the sestet on the ground that they destroy the unity of the poem, 
and for this reason he favored the "orbicular" structure, presum- 
ably that of Milton's poems on Harry Vane and the Piemontese 
massacre, which move forward without a break. He would doubt- 
less have been surprised to learn that a considerable body of his son- 
nets conform to the strict Italian rules, and that almost all of them 
fall into two clearly marked, even if irregular, parts. The explana- 
tion of this unintentional regularity is not far to seek. As the great 
difficulty of the sonnet lies in the rimes, it is to these that the poet 
must give most of his attention. Now if the first eight lines of his 
poem have certain rimes arranged in one way and the last six have 
other rimes arranged in another way, what is more natural than 
that, without regard to pauses or divisions, he should work out his 
two sets of rimes more or less separately, and that, as most short 
poems naturally fall into two parts, the division should come where 
the rimes change? Often, to be sure, the first part will fall short or 
will run over into the second, but it will quite as often end where its 

' Astonishing as this is in one who put much of his best work into sonnets and who 
wrote on an average twelve a year for forty-four years, we must remember that we 
English-speaking people — poets, critics, and readers alike — usually maintain towards 
the structure and rules of the sonnet, as well as towards most matters of poetic form, 
an attitude of "superior" or ignorant indifference. The difficulty Wordsworth ex- 
perienced in making up his mind he probably increased by trying to reconcile what he 
thought should be done with what he was in the habit of doing. 



534 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

rimes end. This seems to be the explanation of Wordsworth's struc- 
ture, — the sphere theory sometimes carried out, but more often 
modified unconsciously by the rimes into a bipartite arrangement, 
which frequently fulfils all the Italian rules. ^ If the explanation is 
correct, it affords a striking tribute to the reasonableness of the laws 
of the form. 

That Milton and no one else is mentioned in this discussion of 
sonnet-structure suggests the source of Wordsworth's convictions 
in the matter. Yet this would be clear enough had he used no name, 
for the form he has in mind is found only in the work of Milton and 
his followers. In his comments on the genre he ignored Spenser, and 
usually even Shakespeare, of whose poems he did not entirely ap- 
prove ; 2 but he constantly quoted Milton's usage as authoritative. 
In another letter of 1833, for example, he wrote that he had used 
double rimes in his sonnets "much less in proportion than my great 
masters, especially Milton, who has two out of his eighteen with 
double rhymes."^ He frankly imitated one of the "Petrarchian 
stanzas" of his master,^ and took the best line of his fine After- 
thought (to the Duddon series) from Paradise Lost} Most of his 
poetic tributes to his favorite, furthermore, are in his quatorzains, — 
not only the famous "Milton! thou should 'st be living at this hour " 
and the fine Latitudinarianism,^ but the lines, 

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue 
That Shakespeare spake ; the faith and morals hold 
Which Milton held.^ 

1 Mr. Hutchinson notes {Poems, etc., i. 218) that in the 1807 volumes only seven 
have the sphere structure without pause or turn, whereas thirty-four have the regular 
Italian bipartite structure, and fifteen the bipartite structure but with the pause not in 
the regular place (though, as several of these fifteen have the pause without the turn, 
they are really not bipartite). This was approximately Wordsworth's usage throughout 
life. 

2 It will be remembered that in his account of 'taking fire' at Milton's sonnets (see 
p. 529 above) he spoke of Shakespeare's "fine sonnets." Yet he wrote to W. R. Hamil- 
ton, Nov. 22, 1831, "Shakespeare's sonnets . . . are not upon the Italian model, which 
Milton's are; they are merely quatrains with a couplet tacked to the end; and if they 
depended much on the versification, they would unavoidably be heavy." 

' To Henry Taylor, Letters, iii. ^^. Thirty years before he had written to his brother 
Richard: "Milton's sonnets ... I think manly and dignified compositions, distinguished 
by simplicity and unity of object and aim, and undisfigured by false or vicious orna- 
ments. . . . They have an energetic and varied flow of sound, crowding into narrow room 
more of the combined effect of rhyme and blank verse, than can be done by any other 
kind of verse I know of" (Knight's Life, i. 370). 

* On the Detraction which followed the Publication of a certain Poem (cf. Milton's On 
the Detraction which followed upon my writing certain Treatises). 

' "We feel that we are greater than we know" (cf. P. L., viii. 282). 

' Quoted on pp. 179-81 above. 

" "It is not to be thought of that the Flood," 11-13. 



THE SONNET: WORDSWORTH 535 

In his "Great men have been among us" he mentions 
Young Vane, and others who called Milton friend; 

and he closes his "Scorn not the Sonnet" with the lines, 

And, when a damp 
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand 
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew 
Soul-animating strains — alas, too few! 

Wordsworth performed a great service for the sonnet. The quality 
and quantity of his productions (there are five hundred twenty- 
three in all), combined with the commanding position their author 
came to occupy, have made them for nearly a hundred years the 
most widely read of all English quatorzains and have thus given 
them great influence. In his own day his most important contribu- 
tion lay in freeing the genre from the sentimentality, melancholy, and 
triviality which were becoming fastened upon it. He re-dedicated it 
to the loftiest purpose and the most serious occasions, and in so doing 
secured for it some of the respect it had failed to win from many 
eighteenth-century readers.^ He also helped to make it a favorite 
vehicle for nature poetry. Yet by no means all the credit is his; for 
the tendency of literature since 1800 has been steadily towards na- 
ture and away from sentimental melancholy, and even before this 
time the majority of sonnets, including many of those by Words- 
worth's own friends, Coleridge, Southey, and Lamb, had not been 
pensive.^ There can be no question, however, that then as now his 

1 Indirectly it is owing to Milton and Wordsworth that so many poets turned to 
the sonnet to express their feelings in regard to the recent war. 

2 The exacting and (as they seemed to him) arbitrary rules of the sonnet, and not, 
as Mr. Hutchinson believes (reprint of the 1807 Poems, i. 209-12), the sentimental 
melancholy of the contemporary quatorzain, were responsible for the poor opinion 
Wordsworth held of the genre in his earlier years. In the preface to his Sitnonidea 
Landor had observed " that the sonnet was a structure of verse incompatible with the 
excursive genius of our commanding language" (Forster's summary, in his life of 
Landor, 1869, ii. 8). It was in referring to this remark that Wordsworth said in a letter 
to its author: "You . . . depreciate that form of composition. I do not wonder at this. 
I used to think it egregiously absurd" (see above, p. 529, n. 2). Clearly, the form of 
the composition and not the contents of the poems was what each poet objected to. 
How far Wordsworth was from feeling contempt for the "green-sickness" of the 
eighteenth-century sonnets may be seen in his letter to Alexander Dyce (May 10, 1830, 
and cf. Letters, iii. 25, 31) : "If a second edition of your Specimens should be called for, 
you might add from Helen Maria WiUiams the Sonnet to the Moon, and that to Twilight; 
and a few more from Charlotte Smith, particularly 'I love thee, mournful, sober-suited 
night.'" This shows, as does the strong impression Bowles's sonnets made upon him 
(see above, p. 511, n. i), not only that he was fond of the very sonneteers upon whom 
Mr. Hutchinson says he turned his back, but that he particularly liked poems of the 
"deploring dumps" variety, for which, according to the same authority, he had a 
"hearty contempt." 



536 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

quatorzains were an inspiration to many who used the form, and 
that for a century past they have been the strongest force in keep- 
ing it irregular in structure, lofty in tone, sincere, noble, and earnest 
in feeling, — in other words, in making it not simply a lute but a 
trumpet, an instrument for expressing the noblest and deepest things 
in man. 

Notwithstanding the scorn Byron often expressed for the "great 
metaquizzical poet," it is quite possible that he owed to Words- 
worth the inspiration of his best sonnets. In the summer of 1816 he 
was brought by Shelley (near whom he was living at Lake Geneva) 
to some appreciation of the lake poet's greatness, an appreciation 
reflected in the Prisoner of Chillon, the third canto of Childe Harold, 
and Manfred, all of which were written at this time or a little later. 
It may well be more than coincidence, therefore, that the sonnet on 
Chillon, 

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind! 

Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art, 

which was composed at this period, has much of the same ring as 
those Wordsworth had "dedicated to liberty" fourteen years earlier. 
Lines like the following, from two of Byron's other quatorzains, 
might have come from the same series : 

The lore 

Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core 

Of human hearts the ruin of a wall 

Where dwelt the wise and wondrous. 

To be the father of the fatherless, 

To stretch the hand from the throne's height, and raise 

His offspring, who expired in other days 

To make thy Sire's sway by a kingdom less, — 

This is to be a monarch. ^ 

Some change must certainly have come over him, for two and a half 
years before composing his lines on Chillon he had written: "Redde 
some Italian, and wrote two Sonnets. ... I will never write another. 
They are the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic composi- 
tions." ^ As these first two quatorzains are on love and are devoted 
largely to the beauty of the loved one, — in other words, as they are 
clearly patterned after the Italian poems which Byron had just read, 
— and as the later ones are on the Miltonic model, there can be little 
question that it was a strong impulse from without which changed his 
attitude towards the genre and inspired him to use it again. But, as 
so often with the Don Juan of literature, the impulse was short- 

1 To Lake Leman, 6-9; To the Prince Regent, 1-5. ^ Diary, Dec. 18, 1813. 



THE SONNET: BYRON — SHELLEY 537 

lived, and three years passed before another external suggestion led 
him to try the form again. ^ 

Byron's six sonnets are Petrarchan, save that one has the three- 
rimed octave; all use run-over lines freely and in one case at the 
close of the octave. Yet, as the same rime-scheme is found in the 
early sonnets on the Italian model, and as the dignity, terseness, and 
vigor which characterize three of the poems mark most of Byron's 
serious verse, there is no evidence of any direct influence from Mil- 
ton.2 

One of Shelley's earliest sonnets is addressed to the "Poet of Na- 
ture," but neither this nor the later ones show any influence from 
Wordsworth. The restrictions of the Petrarchan type might have 
afforded an excellent condenser for the power that Shelley usually 
allowed to escape in beautiful but nebulous shapes; yet he did not 
submit to these restrictions, and perhaps for that reason wrote only 
three or four quatorzains of any great value. Though he translated 
Itahan sonnets and used the terza and the ottava rima, the lawless 
indifference of romanticism, from which most of his verse suffers, 
led him habitually to disregard almost every rule of the form and to 
employ whatever arrangement of rimes came handy. Yet in spite of 
these defects Ozymandias is a deeply impressive poem, and Political 
Greatness, as will be seen from the opening lines, has a stateliness and 
weight which place it in the Miltonic class : 

Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame. 
Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts, 
Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame; 
Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts, 
History is but the shadow of their shame. 

The sonnets of Keats, like most of his work, will be better under- 
stood if they are studied in connection with those of Leigh Hunt. 
A volume of ''Juvenilia" which Hunt published in 1801 contains 
six quatorzains, all in the Shakespearean form except that three do 
not end with couplets. The first is addressed to Sensibility, "soft 
pow'r" 

That warblest sweet thy lorn, romantic tale, 

Or by the mould'ring abbey lov'st to rove. 

' On July 31, 1819, he composed one for the marriage of the Countess Rasponi, 
and twelve days later that to the Prince Regent. 

' To be sure, Byron admired Milton; and as Shelley and his wife read Paradise Lost 
in 181 6 (the summer they spent with Byron), and as a line in Childe Harold (canto iv, 
stanza xlvii, written a year later, "Thy wrongs should ring, and shall, from side to 
side ") is taken from Milton's second sonnet to Cyriack Skinner, it is barely possible 
that Milton had something to do with the change in Byron's attitude towards the 
sonnet. 



538 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

In another, To Eve, which shows the influence of Collins, the young 
bard exclaims, 

How sweet to wander thro' the dusky vale, 
When Philomela weeps her bleeding woes! 

Such effusions clearly belong with those of Hayley, Miss Seward, 
Miss Williams, Mrs. Smith, and the Delia Cruscans. In more ma- 
ture years Hunt wrote over forty other sonnets, many of them win- 
ning and admirable in almost every way, and one to the Nile that is 
superb. Yet he never entirely rid himself of the somewhat senti- 
mental prettiness of his early models, of expressions like "bosomy," 
"freshfulness," "a leafy rise, With farmy fields," ''wilful blisses . . . 
kisses," 

Delicious kisses put deliciously, 

A thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand times.^ 

His devotion to the Italians, the Elizabethans, and particularly to 
Spenser (who came to be his favorite poet), while it did not add to 
the virility of his poems, gave them a richness, a tender charm and 
grace, unknown to the eighteenth-century sonnet. As these qual- 
ities mark the quatorzains that Hunt produced immediately before 
and during the years when he was giving encouragement and direc- 
tion to Keats, it is little wonder that the same characteristics appear 
in the sonnets of the younger poet. 

Yet, as Mr. de Selincourt has warned us, *'it is uncritical to father 
upon Hunt all the vices of Keats's early work. For Hunt could 
never have gained the same sway over his mind had there not been a 
natural affinity between them." ^ His taste as a young man was not 
virile, but inclined toward excessive ornamentation of the wedding- 
cake variety ; his early reading was largely in the sentimental poets 
of the eighteenth century ("Mrs. Tighe and Beattie," he tells us, 
"once delighted me"^ ), and he was without the intellectual disci- 
pline or the cultured surroundings and companionships which might 
have corrected these weaknesses. Since many of the Hayley- Wil- 
liams-Smith-Tighe school were still alive and highly esteemed when 
he began to write, it is not strange that he followed them, as even 
Wordsworth did in his earliest work. Hunt, who began sonneteering 
when these writers were in their prime, did not so much hand a torch 
on to Keats as fan the one the younger man was already carrying. 

' From the sonnets beginning, "The baflBed spell" (lines 6, 13), "A steeple issuing" 
(1-2), "O lucky prison " (9, 11-13). 

^ Keats, Poems (2d ed., 1907), p. xxvii. 

^ Letter to George and Georgiana Keats, November, 1818 {Letters, ed. Forman, 
1895, p. 249). 



THE SONNET: HUNT — KEATS 539 

How closely akin the author of Sleep and Poetry was to the Delia 
Cruscans may be seen in some lines from what appears to be his 
earliest sonnet, written in December, 1814, before he had met Hunt 
or was appreciably influenced by him : 

Thou thy griefs dost dress 
With a bright halo, shining beamily. . . . 
Still warble, dying swan! still tell the tale, 
The enchanting tale, the tale of pleasing woe.^ 

Nor is this sort of thing confined to his early verses. Passages like the 
following, written the one two years and the other five years later 
(the second being one of his last poems), show that he never en- 
tirely shook it off : 

Give me a golden pen, and let me lean 

On heap'd up flowers, in regions clear, and far; 

Bring me a tablet whiter than a star. 

Or hand of hymning angel, when 'tis seen 

The silver strings of heavenly harp atween: 

And let there glide by many a pearly car, 

Pink robes, and wavy hair, and diamond jar. 

The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! 
Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast, 
Warm breath, tranced whisper, tender semi-tone. 
Bright eyes, accomplish'd shape, and lang'rous waist! ' 

These lines, though better expressed, are not essentially different 
from what the Delia Cruscans wrote, — this, for example: 

Dear balmy lips of her who holds my heart . . . 
Dear lips! — permit viy trembling lips to press 
Your ripen'd softness, in a tender kiss : 
And, while my throbbing heart avows the bliss. 
Will you — (dear lips!) the eager stranger's bless? 

Her dark-brown tresses negligently flow 
In curls luxuriant, to her bending waist . . . 
Her cheeks — soft blushing, emulate the rose. 
Her witching smiles, the orient pearls disclose: 
And o'er her lips, the dew of Hybla strays.^ 

' To Byron, 7-8, 13-14. Compare the sonnet to Chatterton, and the three (the first 
of which begins, "Woman! when I behold thee") published in Keats's first volume but 
— probably because they were written earlier — not in the same part of the volume. 

^ On Leaving some Friends, 1-7; "The day is gone," 1-4; cf. the first three lines of 
The Flowre and the Lefe. Even in the sestet of "Bright star," the desire to "swoon to 
death" upon his "fair love's ripening breast" has an unpleasant suggestion of Hunt 
and the Delia Cruscans. 

^ Poetry of the World (1788), ii. 123, 130. 



540 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

The persistence of a modified Delia Cruscanism in Keats's sonnets 
is due in no small part to the other great force at work upon them, 
the influence of the Elizabethans. His devotion to Spenser, who 
made him a poet and who affected almost everything he wrote, needs 
no comment here; yet it is worth noting that the Amoretti seem to 
have left him cold, since he never used their rime-scheme or appar- 
ently was otherwise influenced by them. For the greatest of the 
Elizabethan sonneteers, however, he had enthusiastic praise. "One 
of the three books I have with me," he wrote in 1817, "is Shak- 
speare's Poems: I never found so many beauties in the Sonnets — 
they seem to be full of fine things said unintentionally. . . . He has 
left nothing to say about nothing or anything." * This admiration 
for Shakespeare's quatorzains and for the Faerie Queene is reflected 
in the sensuous luxuriance of thought and expression which mark his 
own sonnets, in their grace and fluency, their frequent and ardent 
treatment of love, and in the rime-sequence of the later ones. Until 
his reading of Shakespeare's poems in November, 181 7 (which led to 
the enthusiastic letter just quoted), he used the Petrarchan arrange- 
ment; thereafter, with a few exceptions, he employed only the 
Shakespearean. 2 As he rarely disregarded the pauses and turn, and 
as he was interested in Italian poetry, he may have derived his rime- 
scheme, and in part his conception of the sonnet, from Petrarch, 
Dante, and their countrymen.' 

Notwithstanding the excellence of Keats's models, it is obvious 
that they were not of a kind to correct his tendency to lusciousness 
and over-ornamentation, which had been strengthened by the Delia 
Cruscans and Hunt. Accordingly, though some of his greatest qua- 
torzains have nobility of conception and dignity of expression as well 
as beauty, yet in the main they lack vigor, intensity, condensation, 
elevation of tone, and depth of thought. How it is that they were 
uninfluenced by the sonnets of Wordsworth, whom their author 
deeply admired, and of Milton, whose Paradise Lost transformed his 
other poetry, it is hard to say, unless the Delia Cruscan-Italian- 
Elizabethan conceptions of the sonnet possessed him so completely 

1 Letter to J. H. Reynolds, Nov. 22, 1817. Keats's praise of Shakespeare's quator- 
zains is the earliest I recall from any sonneteer of the eighteenth or nineteenth century. 

* Pointed out by Mr. de Selincourt in his edition of Keats (pp. 543-4), which here, 
as in Chapter X above, has been of great assistance to me. Thirty-nine of the poet's 
sixty-one sonnets, according to Mr. de SeHncourt, are Petrarchan, three Petrarchan 
except for the final couplet, three experimental, and sixteen Shakespearean. 

' Keats also translated twelve lines of a sonnet by Ronsard, whose "works," he 
wrote to Reynolds (Sept. 21 or 22, 1818), "have great beauties." This comment, and 
the fact that he was interested enough to translate the piece, show at least the kind of 
sonnet that attracted him. 



THE SONNET: KEATS S41 

that he did not admire, or, as is more probable, was disinclined to 
write, Miltonic sonnets.^ At any rate, his significance in the develop- 
ment of the form lies in his reintroducing the Shakespearean quator- 
zain. It may be objected, to be sure, that the Elizabethan revival 
was in the air, that Hazlitt, Lamb, Hunt, and others were preaching 
and exemplifying it, and that Keats's sonnets had little immediate 
influence; but, at all events, he is the first writer since Drummond of 
Hawthornden to use in a considerable number of important poems 
the kind of quatorzain written by Shakespeare and his contempora- 
aries. Strictly speaking, he did not revive the earlier type, but in- 
fused the amorous richness and splendor of the Elizabethans into the 
one used by Hayley, Charlotte Smith, the Delia Cruscans, Coleridge, 
and Hunt, transforming it into what has ever since been one of the 
most popular kinds of sonnet. 

Here we must pause ; for to continue examining in this way all the 
more significant of the thousands of quatorzains written by Keats's 
contemporaries and successors would be a task epic in length if not in 
importance. Most of these later poems are far better than their 
predecessors, richer, more finished, weightier in meaning, and lovelier 
in expression. In fact, since Keats first heard Chapman speak out 
loud and bold, so many quatorzains have appeared that the world has 
been unable to read any considerable part of them or to remember 
even the best. Many, therefore, of real excellence, if not of purest 
ray serene, the dark unfathomed stacks of libraries bear. The sonnet 
has probably attained a higher level of general achievement in the 
past century, and given rise to a larger number of poems that come 
near to satisfying us, than has any other form. Yet most of these 
later quatorzains are less significant in the development of the genre 
than those we have been examining, for they belong in the main to 
one or another of the types we have already noted. With the awaken- 
ing to the beauty of Shakespeare's poems, many have made use of the 
key wherewith he unlocked his heart, and as a result his disposition 
of the rimes has become more popular than any other. Similarly 
the growth of eclecticism and cosmopohtanism, of the knowledge 
and appreciation of other literatures, has greatly increased the ad- 
mirers of Petrarch, Dante, and their countrymen, giving them an in- 
fluence they never possessed in the eighteenth century. Indeed, the 
extensive use of Italian models, particularly by Rossetti and his ad- 

1 Mr. de Selincourt thinks "there can be little doubt" that Keats's burlesque sonnet 
To a Cat was "intended as a parody of the Miltonic sonnet" (see his Keats, p. 557, and 
cf . 544) ; yet it is so poor a parody, catching so few of Milton's most obvious character- 
istics, that I cannot believe its author intended it as such. Mock-heroic it certainly is, 
and that, it seems to me, is all. 



542 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

mirers, is the most significant modification introduced into the son- 
net in the Victorian era. The example of the Italians and the 
Elizabethans has revived sonnet-sequences, and has gone far to- 
wards giving the form back to "the dainty hand of love," which has 
held many of the best quatorzains written in the last seventy-five 
years. Yet nature, though by no means so prominent as it was in the 
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, is still a favorite 
theme in this, as in all other poetic forms. 

With the great increase in the number of good modern sonnets, 
with the appreciation of those by the Elizabethans, Italians, French, 
and others, and with the passing of the eighteenth-century enthusi- 
asm for Milton, his " Petrarchian stanzas " have lost the preeminence 
which they long enjoyed. Yet not a few of the bards who gild the 
lapse of time from Keats's day to our own either have taken fire 
from Milton's sonnets or have unconsciously modelled their own 
upon his. One of the earliest of these men. Sir Aubrey de Vere, dedi- 
cated his one hundred fifty- two quatorzains in 1842 to Wordsworth, 
''whose friendship," his son tells us, "he regarded as one of the chief 
honours of his later life," and whose influence is clearly seen in the 
subject-matter, spirit, and form of De Vere's own productions. Sir 
Aubrey "valued the sonnet the more because its austere brevity, its 
severity, and its majestic completeness fit it especially for the loftier 
themes of song." ^ It is unnecessary to point out from whom this 
conception of the quatorzain was ultimately derived, or how well it 
is embodied in these lines : 

Godfrey, first Christian Captain! Bohemond! 
Tancred! and he, whose wayworn gabardine, 
And steel clad limbs, the throne of Constantino 
Pressed in the face of day, though thousands frowned! 

These iron-rifted cliffs, that o'er the deep, 
Wave-worn and thunder-scarred, enormous lower, 
Stand like the work of some primeval Power, 
Titan or Demiurgos, that would keep 
Firm ward for ever o'er the bastioned steep 
Of turret-crowned Beltard, or mightiest Moher.^ 

' Memoir by the younger Sir Aubrey, in his edition of his father's sonnets, 1875, 
pp. xii-xiii. " For his earlier sonnets," adds the son, "he had found a model chiefly in 
the Italian poets, especially Petrarch and Filicaja"; but it is difficult to trace any evi- 
dence of these writers in the poems published, some of which were written as early as 
1817. They are grouped under the heads, "Religious and Moral," "On Character and 
Events," "Descriptive," "Personal, Miscellaneous," "Historical," and "On the Lord's 
Prayer." 

2 lb. 58, 31: The Crusaders, no. 2; The Cliffs, no. i. 



THE SONNET: DE VERE — HANMER 543 

The three hundred sonnets which the younger De Vere began to 
publish in 1842 are much like his father's, quite as good, and equally 
Miltonic: 

Allies! I deem that vision fair and brave 
Though dread which found in thee no dim-eyed seer. . . . 
The Tribes Barbaric o'er the Empire drave 
Launched from the terrible North; while froze for fear 
Cities high-walled, that tramp barbaric near.^ 

Wordsworth also left his mark on the numerous "toys of the 
Titans" composed by the corn-law poet, Ebenezer Elliott. These 
include a " cycle of revolutionary sonnets " fifty in number {The Year 
of Seeds, written in 1848), which attempted to improve on the rime- 
scheme, the bipartite structure, and other features of the legitimate 
form. Elhott appeals in three places to Milton's usage,^ and seems to 
have been guided somewhat by it, though he lacks the condensation 
and power of the earlier poet. A few of his quatorzains recall those 
of Bowles. 

It is an impressive but melancholy tribute to the wealth of good 
poetry contained in the nineteenth-century English sonnet that work 
of the noble, classic beauty of Sir John Hanmer's has been allowed 
to slip into an oblivion so deep that the Harvard Library copy of his 
sixty sonnets remained for nearly eighty years uncut. The quality 
of the poems may be judged from the following specimen, which is no 
better than many others, but in its lofty tone, its love of nature and 
of the past, its Petrarchan rime-scheme and general Miltonic cast, is 
typical of the entire volume: 

I saw two Columns, by a southern shore; 
One, standing in its Dorian majesty. 
Simple, and stern, and natural it might be; 
So blended with the hUls the shape it wore. 
But some Cyclopean hand, ere time was hoar. 
Had reared it up to Neptune; and his sea 
Still beUows out beneath, memoriaUy; 
Marking the moments' flight with tumbling roar. 
O'erthrown the other, of inferior race; 
Spiral and fretted, as a beechen bole. 
That thin green stems of ivy overlace; 
Between their dates did twenty ages roll; 
And still the first, with his Homeric grace, 
Stood scathless; lifting up the gazer's soul.' 

1 To Thomas W. Allies (in Mediaeval Records, 1893, p. 253). 

' In the first poem of the "cycle," and in the preface and one sonnet ("Why should 
the tiny harp") of Rhymed Rambles. 
' Sonnets (1840), no. vii. 



544 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

None of the more eminent Victorians produced sonnets so closely 
akin to Milton's as are the twenty-five by Matthew Arnold. In 
spirit and in subject-matter these poems are much alike ; all reveal 
the clear-eyed, resolute facing of life's problems, the fine breeding, 
restraint, and intellectuality of the fastidious scholar, dissatisfied 
with the life about him and yearning for the peace which his nature 
will not allow him to enjoy. The first eleven, however, are sharply 
distinguished from the later (Petrarchan) ones by their disregard for 
almost every law of the legitimate sonnet.^ Arnold's antipathy to 
Puritanism chilled the enthusiasm he would otherwise have had for 
the most classic of English poets, and much that seems Miltonic in 
his quatorzains, whether written early or late, is probably due to 
their author's love for Greek poetry. This may also account for such 
inversions of the word-order as 

Was woe than Byron's woe more tragic far, 

and for the pithy directness of such lines as 

He saves the sheep, the goats he doth not save. 
So rang Tertullian's sentence, on the side 
Of that unpitying Phrygian sect which cried: 
"Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave, 
"Who sins, once wash'd by the baptismal wave." 2 

Yet it is hard to believe that the following sonnet, with its quiet, im- 
pressive conclusion, and the similarity of its opening question and 
general tone to the second poem that Milton addressed to Cyriack 
Skinner, did not derive something from the utterances of the reso- 
lute Puritan fallen upon evil days: 

Who prop, thou ask'st, in these bad days, my mind? — 
He much, the old man, who, clearest-soul'd of men. 
Saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen, 
And Tmolus hill, and Smyrna bay, though blind. 
Much he, whose friendship I not long since won, 
That halting slave, who in Nicopolis 
Taught Arrian, when Vespasian's brutal son 
Clear'd Rome of what most shamed him. But be his 
My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul, 
From first youth tested up to extreme old age, 
Business could not make dull, nor passion wild; 

' The Austerity of Poetry, which stands at the beginning of the later group, has a 
run-over line at the end of the octave and the turn comes at line twelve. Such sestet 
arrangements as c a d e c e and c d c e d e occur in the later sonnets, but none end with 
couplets. 

2 A Picture at Newstead, 14; The Good Shepherd with the Kid, 1-5. 



THE SONNET: ARNOLD — TENNYSON 545 

Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole; 
The mellow glory of the Attic stage. 
Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child. ^ 

In the first two volumes Tennyson published there are more son- 
nets than in all the rest combined; indeed, he never reprinted a num- 
ber of the early ones. His comparative neglect of the form in later 
life was not due to a poor opinion of it, for his last quatorzains are 
more exalted than the first, and share, with Ulysses, the condensa- 
tion and vigor which are none too prominent in his poetry. In 
these respects, in the intensity and nobility of the spirit that ani- 
mates it, as well as in the dignity of its style, the following address 
to Montenegro ranks among the more notable of the Miltonic sonnets 
that have appeared since Wordsworth's day : 

They rose to where their sovran eagle sails, 
They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height, 
Chaste, frugal, savage, arm'd by day and night 
Against the Turk; whose inroad nowhere scales 
Their headlong passes, but his footstep fails. 
And red with blood the Crescent reels from fight 
Before their dauntless hundreds, in prone flight 
By thousands down the crags and thro' the vales. 
O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne 
Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm 
Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years, 
Great Tsernogora! never since thine own 
Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm 
Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers.'' 

Any one who is surprised to find Miltonic sonnets among Tenny- 
son's poems will be startled to encounter them among the brilliantly- 
artificial and sensuously-exotic productions of Oscar Wilde's genius. 
It is a genuine shock to meet, a few pages after the luscious richness 
of the decadent Charmides, a sonnet to the austere Puritan poet, 

^^^^^> Dear God! is this the land 

Which bare a triple empire in her hand 
When Cromwell spake the word Democracy! 

' To a Friend. Cf. Milton, 

What supports me, dost thou ask? 
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied. 

As Arnold had a high regard for Wordsworth, he may have been influenced by the 
sonnets of the lake poet, many of which are not unlike his own. 

2 This was first published in the Nineteenth Century for May, 1877. In its Petrarchan 
rime-scheme and its preservation of the pause and turn between octave and sestet, it is 
typical of the later quatorzains and unlike most of the earlier ones, several of which dis- 
regard almost every rule of the form. Those entitled To Victor Hugo, Alexander, Buona- 
parte, and Poland (the last three written early) are also of the Miltonic- Wordsworthian 
variety. 



546 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Nor is this an isolated case ; for on the opposite page is a sonnet On the 
Massacre of the Christians in Bulgaria, recalling Milton's on the 
Piemontese massacre, and, over the leaf, one that begins, 

Rome! what a scroll of History thine has been; 
In the first days thy sword republican 
Ruled the whole world for many an age's span: 
Then of the peoples wert thou royal Queen. 

The influence of Milton is to be seen in the quatorzains of Cardinal 
Newman, the Earl of Beaconsfield, James Russell Lowell and his 
fellow-countryman Washington Allston,^ in some of Swinburne's,^ as 
well as in those of many 6ther poets famous or forgotten. Nor should 
the noble sonnet on Milton by Ernest Myers, the best interpretation 
of the poet's character that we have in verse, be overlooked, or the 
work of other men still living. For if any one thinks that none but 
the dead have followed Milton he must have paid little heed to what 
was written during the recent war. One of the most striking features 
of this poetry, whether English or American, is the extent to which 
from the very beginning it made use of the sonnet. All the deepest, 
most intense feeUngs called forth by the struggle found a voice in 
the little instrument which in Milton's hands had become a trumpet. 
How direct, concentrated, and Mil tonic many of the poems are, 
these lines To the Hun will show: 

Not for the lust of conquest do we blame 

Thy monstrous armies, nor the blinded rage 

That holds thee traitor to this gentler age, 

Nor yet for cities given to the flame; 

For changing Europe finds thy heart the same, 

And as of old thy bestial heritage. 

The Light is not for thee. The war we wage 

Is less on thee than on thy deathless shame. 

Lo! this is thy betrayal — that we know, 

Gazing on thee, how far Man's footsteps stray 

From the pure heights of love and brotherhood — 

How deep in undelivered night we go — 

How long on bitter paths we shall delay, 

Held by thy bruteship from the Gates of Good.' 

It were folly to claim that every one who before or since 19 14 has 
written sonnets of this kind was directly affected by the poet who 

* The thirteen sonnets of Allston — one of them to Coleridge, whom he knew inti- 
mately in Rome — are appended to his Lectures on Art (ed. R. H. Dana, N. Y., 1850). 
Lowell's sonnet on Wendell Phillips has the Miltonic ring, as has Disraeli's on Welling- 
ton (printed in William Sharp's Sonnets of this Century, 1886, pp. 268-9). 

* Particularly in some of his "Dirae" (Songs of Two Nations), which are notable for 
their directness and concentrated passion. 

* George Sterling, in his Binding of the Beast (San Francisco, 1917). 



MILTON AND THE SONNET 547 

first composed them. Some may have scarcely known his work, and 
only a few may have been inspired by his example to use the quator- 
zain for sterner, loftier purposes. The qualities, for example, that 
make the work of the younger De Vere seem Miltonic are probably 
due to the natural temper of his mind and to his study of Greek, for 
they are present in his other poetry. Milton may have had nothing 
directly to do with De Vere's belief that "a true sonnet is character- 
ized by greatness, not prettiness ... it is in substance solidlysimple";^ 
yet ultimately this idea of the genre is derived from the Puritan stan- 
zas which are the earliest, and perhaps still the greatest, exemplifica- 
tions of it. The channel which let the mightier waters flow through 
the sonnet was dug by Milton, and, however little those who use 
these streams to-day may realize it, they are profiting by his origi- 
nality and daring and are following his course. Even those who 
employ the form for lighter purposes and amorous themes copy him 
when, as often, they disregard the pauses and the turn or use run-over 
lines and internal pauses, — when, like most of the sonneteers of the 
last two centuries, they make their prosody practically that of blank 
verse. Furthermore, in so far as the poems have been held to the 
legitimate rime-scheme, the credit is in no slight degree due to 
Milton, who is also somewhat responsible for the many quatorzains 
that are addressed to persons and begin with proper names in the 
vocative. 

Some of these obligations may be unimportant, others undesirable, 
but in one matter Milton has rendered vital service. The sonnet has 
always in all languages shown a tendency towards sweetness rather 
than strength, towards finish rather than thought, towards pretty 
trifling and absorption in the single theme, love. Not only does this 
hold of Elizabethan times and the late eighteenth century, but it is 
the popular conception of the form in our own day. The tendency, 
if it had not constantly been met by powerful forces of another kind, 
would have greatly narrowed the scope of the poem, would have 
made it monotonous, have lessened the esteem in which practically 
all modern English poets have held it, and have deprived us of much 
noble verse. Without the salutary influence of Milton and his fol- 
lowers the sonnet might have been devoted largely to what Johnson 
termed the carving of heads upon cherry-stones. This influence has 
been of the more permanent significance because, instead of being so 
decided as to suppress originality, it has only stimulated and given 
direction to it. tlnlike the poems modelled upon the octosyllabics, 
those that have followed the sonnets are by no means slavish copies; 

^ Memoir prefixed to his edition of his father's sonnets, 1875, P- xiii. 



548 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

they are like children, bearing their father's features but having their 
owii tastes and wills and living their own lives. It is safe to say, 
then, not only that the sonnet was reborn under the influence of 
Milton and for many years kept subject almost solely to him, but 
that from the time of its rebirth, one hundred and fifty years ago, to 
the very present it has carried his impress as it has that of no other 
poet. 



CHAPTER XX 

THE INFLUENCE OF THE REMAINING POEMS 

The definite, tangible influence of Milton's other poems has been 
relatively slight. Not one of them has ever enjoyed a vogue com- 
parable to that of the epic, the octosyllabics, or the sonnets; not one 
has furnished a pattern that other poets have used extensively. A 
mould was, to be sure, made from Lycidas by means of which some 
very chalky casts were turned out; but, as compared with the odes 
to abstractions, the sonnets, or the pieces in Miltonic blank verse, 
their number is negligible. This is not to minimize the inspiration 
that Comiis, Lycidas, and Samson Agonistes have given to genera- 
tions of readers and poets, the suggestions they have furnished, or the 
imponderable, often vague and unconscious, but none the less valu- 
able influence they have exerted on the versification, language, 
imagery, and other aspects of the poet's art. But such things cannot 
be proved or their extent and importance estimated. All great art, 
like great action, makes impressions that cannot be calculated: it is 
only the more definite, and often more superficial, traces that we may 
hope to detect. 

For this reason we cannot expect to separate the influence of 
Paradise Regained from that of Paradise Lost. Different as the two 
works are, it is impossible to tell, except by the subject-matter, 
whether a poet is following the later or the earlier one; and the 
subject-matter of Paradise Regained was little used, — never, I 
think, in a piece uninfluenced by Paradise Lost. From the almost 
universal preference for the epic and the remarkable frequency with 
which its phrases are borrowed, as well as from the expressive silence, 
or the occasionally-expressed indifference, in regard to its successor, 
the assumption seems warranted that Paradise Regained exerted a 
relatively unimportant influence, and that writers who employ the 
Miltonic style and diction derive them mainly from the account " Of 
man's first disobedience." 

Lycidas 

Lycidas, as has been said, did furnish the pattern for a number of 
poems, principally of the eighteenth century. I have found some 
thirty-five such, very few of which attracted any contemporary 



J 



5 so THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

attention or are known to-day even to scholars. The features that 
impressed most of the imitators were that Lycidas is a pastoral on the 
death of a friend, that it is termed a "monody" (the English word 
appears to have been known in the eighteenth century only through 
Milton's use of it) , that the lines vary in length and the rime-scheme 
is irregular, that several persons come to lament the dead, and that 
the piece ends with the departure of the shepherd who 'sings' the 
elegy. The expressions "Yet once more, O ye laurels," "Where were 
ye, Nymphs," "Alas! what boots it," and "Weep no more, woeful 
shepherds . . . For Lycidas ... is not dead," were apt to linger in the 
memory, as were the references to college days and the picture of the 
young poet's life in heaven. 

The history of the monody movement is that of the Allegro- 
Penssroso vogue in miniature: it was of little account before 1747 or 
after 1800, and was at its height from 1770 to the end of the century. 
Although there are some borrowings from Lycidas in Robert Baron's 
Cyprian Academy (1647),^ in the Funeral Poem on Thomas Gunston 
which Isaac Watts wrote during 1701, in Pope's Windsor Forest 
(17 13), and in a few other pieces, the first poem to show any signifi- 
cant influence from it was Colin' s Despair, an Imitation of Milton's 
Lycidas, one of Moses Browne's "Piscatory Eclogues" (1729). 
The piece is pastoral but not elegiac, and the "imitation" is limited 
to a varying line-length, an irregular rime-scheme, a somewhat 
similar ending, and a few verbal borrowings.^ 

In 1737 Richard West, whose death called forth Gray's sonnet, 
composed a Monody on the Death of Queen Caroline, which takes from 
Lycidas its lines of different length and its arrangement of rimes, as 
well as a number of its phrases.^ Aside from these Miltonisms, to 
which may be added a passage reminiscent of Allegro and a line from 
the morning hymn of Adam and Eve curiously adapted to the queen's 

' See above, p. 427. 

* For example, " Yet, O ye Muses, let me once rehearse " (Eclogues, p. 74, cf . Lycidas, 
i); "Begin, and not ungrateful be the Verse" (74, cf. Lye, 17); "swart Fairy-Bands" 
(84, cf. Lye, 138, and Cotnus, 436); "the rath Hind" (84, cf. Lye, 142). Note also "the 
spongy Air" (84, cf. Comus, 154) and "e'er the fled Cock rings his shrill Matin (84, cf. 
Allegro, 114). In later editions this eclogue is called Renock's Despair, and is much 
changed. For borrowings from the Vacation Exercise, Lycidas , Allegro , etc., in the other 
eclogues, see p. 426, n. i, above. Browne prefixed to the volume a dedicatory poem to 
Bubb Dodington in Miltonic blank verse, and later wrote three other pieces in the meas- 
ure (see below, Bibl. I, 1739, 1749, and App. B, 1739). 

' "Mean time thy rural ditty was not mute" ("Dodsley's Miscellany," 1748, ii. 277, 
cf. Lycidas, 32); "oaten-flute" (277, cf. Lye, 33); "Return, sad muse" (278, cf. Lye, 
132); "Ohonour'd flood! with reeds Pierian crown'd" (278, cf. Lye, 85-6); "And call 
thy chosen sons, and bid them bring" (279, cf. Lye, 134); "Ah me! what boots us" 
(279, cf. Lye, 64). 



LYCIDAS 551 

death, the monody is of interest to-day only because a quatrain from 
it suggested one of the finest stanzas in Gray's Elegy} 

West's lament was not published till 1 748, six years after his death 
and one year after William Mason gave to the public his Musaeus, a 
Monody to the Memory of Mr. Pope, in imitation of Milton'' s Lycidas, 
which he had written in 1 744. This effusion of one who came to be 
thought the 

Harmonious Chief of Britain's living Choir,* 

though not so flagrant an imitation as its author's // Bellicoso and 
// Pacifico, is of the Masonic order, since it copies every outstanding 
feature of Milton's elegy. The contents are curious; for, after the 
usual pastoral lament thickly sprinkled with phrases from Lycidas, 
and while "all pale th' expiring Poet laid,'^ Chaucer, Spenser, and 
Milton come to comfort him. Chaucer speaks in a grotesque, un- 
grammatical jargon which shows how imperfectly Middle English 
was understood at the time; Spenser talks in a burlesque of his own 
language and meters; while Milton in blank verse praises the riming 
of the ''heav'n-taught warbler! last and best Of all the train!" ex- 
plaining that he himself had "aim'd to destroy" the *'dire chains" 
of rime, ''hopeless that Art could ease Their thraldom." "Thou 
cam'st," he exclaims, 

and at thy magic touch the chains 
Off dropt, and (passing strange!) soft-wreathed bands 
Of flow'rs their place supply 'd: which well the Muse 
Might wear for choice, not force; obstruction none, 
But loveliest ornament. 

Milton is in the midst of an astounding adaptation of one of the 
finest passages in Paradise Lost to the praise of Pope's tinsel grotto, 
when the dying poet bids him cease, and, after speaking in heroic 
couplets the best lines in the monody, expires. Then follow the 
laments of nymphs and shepherds and an ending similar to that 
of Lycidas. Though revised by Gray,^ praised by many, and printed 

* Compare the last five lines of section iv with Allegro, 148-50 (for another use West 
made of the companion poems, see p. 453 above); and the first line of section v, 
"These are thy glorious deeds, almighty death," with Paradise Lost, v. 153-4. Lines 
5-8 of section v, 

Ah me! what boots us all our boasted power, 
Our golden treasure, and our purple state? 
They cannot ward th' inevitable hour, 
Nor stay the fearful violence of fate, 

prefigure Gray's Elegy, 33-6. 

* Hayley, Essay on Epic Poetry (Dublin, 1782), 3. "That charming poet," Fanny 
Burney called him (Diary, May 8, 1771). ^ See above, p. 69, n. 4. 



552 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

four times in two years, Musaeus is wretched stuff .^ It has interest 
only because it imitates Lycidas and because, by uniting two Kter- 
ary movements often thought hostile, the school of Pope and the 
schools of Milton and Spenser, it illustrates how little the so-called 
romanticists of the mid-eighteenth century revolted from neo- 
classicism. 

The pleasant relations that usually existed between these schools 
is also shown in the case of George, Lord Lyttelton, the friend of Pope 
and Thomson and the admirer of Milton. In 1 747, the year in which 
Musaeus appeared. Lyttelton won general praise with a "Monody" 
on the death of his wife, the best poem the movement produced. 
Inspired by the sincerity and depth of his grief for the woman whom 
he had tenderly loved, he was able, while retaining the classical 
allusions and something of the pastoral element, to be natural and 
unhackneyed. He may have been somewhat influenced by Dryden's 
great ode to the memory of Anne KilHgrew, particularly since he 
did not, like Milton and most of his imitators, begin every line flush 
with the margin, but printed his monody as a Pindaric, varying the 
indentation with the length of the line. Yet there can be no question 
of the debt to Lycidas here : 

Where were ye, Muses, when relentless Fate 
From these fond Arms your fair Disciple tore. . . . 
Nor then did Pindus, or Castalia's Plain, 
Or Aganippe's Fount your Steps detain, 
Nor in the Thespian Vallies did you play; 

Nor then on Mincio's Bank 

Beset with Osiers dank, 
Nor where Clitumnus rolls his gentle Stream. . . . 
Now what avails it that in early Bloom, 

When light, fantastic Toys 

Are all her Sex's Joys, 
With you she search 'd the Wit of Greece and Rome? ^ 

None of the succeeding monodies have sufficient esthetic value to 
merit specific comment, and few are of interest on other grounds. 
One was included in the volume of elegies on the Prince of Wales pub- 
lished in 1 75 1 by the University of Cambridge; one was written for 
the Seaton prize at the same university, and several were called forth 
by the deaths of Gray, Garrick, Chatterton, Shenstone, and the 

1 For the surprisingly high opinion held of Musaeus in. the eighteenth century, see 
Mr. J. W. Draper's doctor's thesis on Mason, Harvard, 1920. 

" To the Memory of a Lady lately Deceased, a Monody ( 1 747) , §§ vii-ix. The best lines 
are not in the passage quoted, but in the last eight sections. The poem is parodied in 
Smollett's Burlesque Ode in memory of a grandmother {Plays and Poems, 1777, pp. 
248-9), which uses several phrases from Lycidas. 



LYCIDAS 553 

Warton brothers. A number of the authors are already familiar to 
us through their imitation of Milton's other poems, — Benjamin 
Stillingfieet the blue-stocking sonneteer, Robert Potter translator of 
the Greek dramatists, Michael Bruce author of the Ode to the Cuckoo, 
Anna Seward the Swan of Lichfield, Thomas Dermody the drink- 
curst Irish Chatterton,^ besides W. L. Bowles, Thomas Warton, and 
Coleridge. The Monody on the Death of Chatterton which Coleridge 
wrote in 1790 is Miltonic not alone in title and in being an elegy on a 
dead poet, but in the arrangement of its rimes and the varying length 
of its lines. The most interesting, if not the only interesting, part of 
the piece comes near the end of the rewritten version, where the 
pantisocracy project is referred to : 

Wisely forgetful! O'er the ocean swell 

Sublime of Hope I seek the cottag'd dell 

Where Virtue calm with careless step may stray. . . . 

O Chatterton! that thou wert yet alive! 

Sure thou would'st spread the canvass to the gale, 

And love with us the tinkling team to drive 

O'er peaceful Freedom's undivided dale. . . . 

Where Susquehannah pours his untamed stream.^ 

Not every monody was Miltonic;^ in fact, the term came to mean 
little more than an elegy which did not employ the quatrain with 
alternate rimes used in Gray's famous poem and in most of the 
numerous eighteenth-century laments. Yet monodies became suffi- 
ciently common to be recognized as a distinct species ; for one section 
is devoted to them in Bell's Classical Arrangement of Fugitive Poetry, 
and Richard Cumberland warned fathers not to be "tickled into 
ecstacy" because their sons had 

hammer'd out a song, 
Or epigram, or monody perhaps 
On a dead greyhound, or a drown'd she-cat.^ 

They were also known well enough to be burlesqued in some lines 
To a Gentleman who desired Proper Materials for a Monody: 

1 Dermody composed his Miltonic Corydon, a Monody, when he was ten years old; 
before he was twelve he wrote a Monody on the Death of Chatterton and a translation of 
Milton's Epitaphium Damonis, neither of which apparently was ever published (see his 
Life, by J. G. Raymond, 1806, i. 6-g, ii. 342). 

^ In his poem To a Friend . . . writing no more Poetry (1796) he quotes the line, 
"Without the meed of one melodious tear" (cf. Lycidas, 14). His Monody on a Tea- 
kettle (written 1790) is intended to be humorous, but is not a burlesque. Lines 14-22 of 
his Religious Musings were clearly suggested by Paradise Lost, iv. 641-56. For his 
sonnets, see pp. 515-16 above. 

* See p. 681 below. 

* Retrospection (i8ii), lines 1090-93. In an "Essay on Elegiac Poetry" {Poems, 1802, 
i. 70) George Dyer has something to say of the monody as a literary form. 



554 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Flowrets — wreaths — thy banks along — 
Silent eve — th' accustom 'd song — 
Silver slipper'd — whilom — lore — 
Druid — Paynim — mountain hoar — 
Dulcet — eremite — what time . . . 
Let these be well together blended — 
Dodsley's your man — the poem's ended.^ 

More amusing than this parody is George Huddesford's diverting 
Monody on the Death of Dick, an Academical Cat, which is connected 
directly with Lycidas only through its title and the lines, 

Where were ye, Nymphs, — when to the silent coast 
Of gloomy Acheron Dick travell'd post? . . . 
For not on Isis' classic shores ye stray'd. . . . 
Regardless of the meed that Fame bestows.* 

Yet it may be that the picture of Lycidas in heaven is burlesqued in 
the account of Dick's occupations in the same place: 

There shall the worthies of the Whisker'd Race 
Elysian Mice o'er floors of sapphire chase, 
Midst beds of aromatic marum stray, 
Or raptur'd rove beside the Milky Way.* 

Huddesford bubbles over with puns, from the motto on the title- 
page, "Micat inter omnes," through the reference to Caligula's horse, 
— which, when consul, could "silence Opposition with his Neigh," — 
to the cataract of words, ''catacomb," "catechise," "categorical," 
"catarrhs," "catastrophe," "catalepsy." But the humor is varied, 
for we are told that Dick 

Taught the great Truth, to half his race unknown: 
"Cats are not kitten'd for themselves alone; 
But hold from Heav'n their delegated claws, 
Guardians of Larders, Liberty, and Laws.". . . 
Tho' much for Milk, more for Renown he mews. 
And nobler objects than his Tail pursues. . . . 
What mice descended, at each direful blow, 
To nibble brimstone in the realms below! . . . 
Unpill'd, unpoultic'd, unphlebotomiz'd! * 

Singularly enough, what seems to be the latest piece influenced by 
Milton's monody is another burlesque, one in which "Mary Jane, 
ex-munition worker, demobilized, speaks" of the aftermath of the 

' Poetical Calendar (1763), v. iii. 

* Salmagundi (1791), 131-2; with the last line compare Lycidas, 84, and Comus, 9. 
In the "thousand Cats ... on sainted seats," one of which descends from his "throne" 
(p. 146), there is another reminiscence of the passage in Comus (line 11). 

' lb. 146. * lb. 133, 138-40. 



LYCIDAS 555 

world war.* In the century and a quarter between the disappearance 
of the "academical cat" and the demobilization of Mary Jane, the 
only close imitation of Lycidas I know of is that with which the Hon. 
Julian Fane won the chancellor's gold medal at Cambridge in 1850, 
Monody on the Death of the Queen Dowager.^ But of course the influ- 
ence of Milton's elegy in the past century was not limited to these 
belated survivors of the movement. For, although the monody as a 
genre may be said to have disappeared from our literature leaving 
no significant traces, the elegiac pastoral to which Milton gave 
new life still lives, and lives to the glory of English poetry. Just how 
much Shelley's Adonais and Arnold's Thyrsis owe to Lycidas it 
is impossible to say, but some inspiration and guidance at least; 
for, even if little in either piece can be pointed out as definitely 
Miltonic, nobody could have written a poem of the kind without 
thinking of Lycidas. Milton's irregular rime-scheme and varying 
length of lines have been adopted by many later writers, by Coven- 
try Patmore, for example,' and by Milton's American editor William 
Vaughn Moody, whose poem on his dead mother's picture makes use 
of them.* In a few instances, as Tennyson's Ode on the Death of the 
Duke of Wellington (1852), Richard Le Gallienne's Robert Louis 
Stevenson (1895), ^^^ the Cecil Rhodes (1902) of Francis Thompson, 
who used the measure often, the meter of Lycidas is employed in 
elegies.* This meter is too unusual and the poem too well known for 
such resemblances to be dismissed as mere coincidences; yet one 
hesitates to say they are more.* 

CoMus AND Samson Agonistes 

In view of the remarkable popularity of Comus on the stage and 
the success of Handel's admirable music for Samson Agonistes, it is 
surprising that Milton's dramas have exerted so little influence. The 
matter cannot be explained on the ground that no masques and 
dramas on the classic model were written, for such is not the case. 
The eighteenth-century masque was not like the Elizabethan or the 

1 Kathleen O'Brien, Mary Jane, etc., in LittelVs Living Age, July 19, 1919, p. 188. 
' Poems which have obtained the Chancellor's Gold Medal in the University of Cam- 
bridge (Camb., i860), 293-300. 

* In three pieces, To the Unknown Eros, Amelia, and V Allegro. 

* The Daguerreotype. Moody's Ode in Time of Hesitation and The Brute are in the 
same meter. 

' Another instance is W. J. Lampton's At Grover Cleveland's Grave, which appeared 
in the New York World, presumably about July i, 1908. 

* There is probably some influence from the meter of Lycidas upon the irregular 
Pindaric ode which Lowell and many other nineteenth- and twentieth-century poets 
have used. 



556 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

Jacobean, to be sure; it was a kind of light opera on the Italian 
model, consisting largely of songs and dances, a difference easily 
realized if the Comus that Milton wrote be compared with the adap- 
tation of it that held the stage. Samson Agonistes would hardly be 
expected to find many imitators; for, though it has always won ad- 
miration, it has apparently never roused the enthusiasm of any large 
number of readers. Comus, on the other hand, was widely known. 
Through regular stage presentations it became more familiar to per- 
sons of a certain class than did Milton's non-dramatic writings, and 
through frequent amateur productions it was brought home to still 
another group. Its songs were in every mouth, and its phrases were 
sown thick in eighteenth-century poetry. Robert Baron plagiarized 
it as early as 1647; ^ the elder War ton and an anonymous writer 
imitated the invocation of Sabrina, and another poet copied the echo 
song; 2 one of the burlesque "Probationary Odes for the Laureat- 
ship" (1785) has the lines. 

Sweetest nymph, that liv'st unseen 
Within that lov'd recess; ^ 

and in Bowles's African (or Dying Slave) the negroes chant, 

Now thy long, long task is done. 
Swiftly, brother, wilt thou run. 

Furthermore, the plan and contents of Comus did exert some in- 
fluence on the drama of the time. In Gilbert West's Institution of the 
Order of the Garter, a Dr agnatic Poem (1742), a spirit descends and 
speaks these lines : 

From the gay realms of cloudless day I come. 

Where in the glitter of unnumber'd worlds. 

That like to isles of various magnitudes 

Float in the ocean of unbounded space; 

On my invisible aerial throne 

I sit, attended with a radiant band 

Of spirits immortal.* 

The Monthly Review says that Parthenia, or the Lost Shepherdess, 
an Arcadian Drama (1764), is "a close imitation of Shakespear and 
Milton in the same species of poetry," and that Midsummer Eve, or 
the Sowing of Hemp (1793). is "an imitation, apparently, of the style 
of Comus, and of the Faithful Shepherdess; and it abounds with 

1 See pp. 427-8 above. ^ See below, Bibl. Ill b, bef. 1745 w., 1787, 1788. 

» Ode XVII, pt. ii. 

* "Dodsley's Miscellany" (1748), ii. 151. Compare with this the opening of Comus, 
which is also faintly suggested by the descent and first words of the spirit (the "Genius 
of England") near the beginning of the poem {ib. 113). 



COMUS 557 

beautiful lines, fanciful ideas, and plagiarisms." ^ These pastorals I 
have not seen ; but I have read the Sappho which William Mason be- 
gan as a masque and in 1778 completed as a "lyrical drama." Sappho 
contains a character named Lycidas, and a scene in which "the 
Naiad Arethusa rises from the stream, seated in a shell," and sings 
the song, 

See! from her translucent bed 

Arethusa brings thee aid. 

Lo! she sprinkles on thy breast 

Vial'd drops, by fingers chaste. . . . 

Thrice I lift my virgin hand, 

Thrice I shed the vapors bland.^ 

That ardent sympathizer with the French Revolution and friend 
of the lake poets, John Thelwall, whom we have met before,^ pub- 
lished in 1 80 1 a wild "dramatic romance," The Fairy of the Lake, in 
which, after he has let loose all the horrors of Scandinavian mythol- 
ogy, he makes the "Lady of the Lake" rise "on a Throne ... in a 
car," by the "margent green," to speak and sing much as Sabrina 
does.* As the fairy disappears at the end of the play, Taliessin 
addresses her thus : 

May those fountains, Lady kind! 
Still their wonted channels find. 
Nor ever water-nymph neglect 
The silent tribute of respect, 
But, thro many a secret vein, 
Still the purer essence strain. 
And thy mystic urn supply, 
Never turbid, never dry.* 

Much closer to Comus than Thelwall's extravagant work is The 
Genii, a Masque (1814), by Andrew Becket. In this piece, after the 
curtain has risen on "the Confine of a Wood" (which suggests Co- 
mus), the "Good Genius" enters and, as in Comus, delivers himself 
of a long speech explaining who he is and why he is there. His first 
words are, 

' xxxii. 233; enl. ed., xii. 341-2. 

2 Works (1811), ii. 350. In the first of the "Letters" prefixed to the early editions of 
Elfrida, Mason says he has enlivened that drama "by various touches of pastoral 
description ... a beauty so extremely striking in . . . Comus . . . As You Like It . . . and 
. . . Philocletes" {ib. 178); and in his Caractacus he has the chorus sing, "Break ofif . . . 
I hear the sound Of steps profane" {ib. 100, cf. Comus, 91-2, 145-6.) Two of the 
choruses in E. B. Impey's Sylphs (1811) recall the octosyllabic passages in Comus. 

2 See above, pp. 300-301. 

* Poems chiefly written in Retirement (1801), 32, 31. 

^ Ib. 91 (cf. Comus, 922-33, and in general 976 to the end). 



558 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

In that bright region of the middle air, 
Abode of chosen beings, who partake 
Of the celestial nature, — Genii call'd, — 
My proper station is. 

Like Milton's attendant spirit, he contrasts life in the "ethereal 
space" with that in "the drear mazes of this nether world," breaks 
off with "But to my sacred duties," says he is waiting for a young 
nobleman, and refers to "these calm scenes of pure and simplest 
nature" which "meditative humour most affects"; then, after a 
lyric passage (which recalls the first speech of Comus) describing 
"Cynthias revels" and referring to a " violet-border'd stream," the 
spirit, upon the approach of his charge, explains that he must put 
on his "heavenly robe," his " sky-tinct vest," and for a time " remain 
imseen." ^ Becket's masque, like Milton's, abounds in octosyllabic 
passages, one of which closes the piece after the fashion of Comus: 

O youth! thou nearly mayst compare, 

With us, the denizens of air. . . . 

Those ranks thou'lt join — when thy freed soul, 

Through the vast space darts to its goal — 

Where virtue dwells, and to renown 

On earth acquir'd, presents the crown. 

But for out-and-out, unblushing imitation of Milton's dramas we 
must turn to twentieth-century America, where, in 1905, Edwin T. 
Whiffen published a volume of dramatic poems, Samson Marrying, 
Samson at Timnah, Samson Hyhristes, and Samson Blinded. These 
are all on the Greek model, with choruses that, like Milton's, are 
in lines of different length, without rimes (which are rare in the 
Agonistes), and "without regard had to Strophe, Antistrophe, or 
Epode." Two of the titles, furthermore, Samson Marrying and Sam- 
son Hyhristes, seem clearly to have been taken from the list of 
dramas Milton drew up in 1642. Such borrowings are not surprising 
or objectionable; but what shall we say of these ? 

A little onward Ues the toilsome path 
For these faint stepfs] of age, 
A little further on.^ 

O miserable hope! is this the man, 
That mighty Samson far renowned? ' 

> Cf. Comus, 1-17, 37, 18, 41-2, 4, 386; 93 ff., 233, 82-92. 
2 Page 99; cf. Samson Agonistes, 1-2. 

2 Page 182; cf. S. A., 340-41. Also cf. p. 57, "Can this indeed be he," etc., with 
S.A., 124-6. 



SAMSON AGONISTES 559 

Just are the ways of God, 

And justly ordained 

His purposes, though darkened oft by doubt 

What Heavenly disposition may allot .^ 

Or of this conclusion of Samson at Timnah? 

O glorious vengeance on our foes inflicted! . . . 

Come, friends, there seems not much for sorrow here, 

And lamentation. . . . 

All is best, though oft endured 

Our grievous ills with questioned doubt. . . . 

His high intent his purpose serves, 

With vindication full and fair event.* 

Strangely enough, this appears to be the only influence worth 
mentioning that Samson Agonistes has exerted. Not a few plays on 
the Greek model have of course been written, but, aside from 
Whiffen's, none embody the distinctive features of Milton's work or 
seem indebted to it verbally, metrically, or structurally.^ The idea 
of writing such a drama, as well as inspiration and vague, general 
guidance in composing it, may sometimes have come from Milton; for 
no writer would attempt so unusual a form without considering the 
only great example of it in English. William Mason, who composed 
two works "on the model of the ancient Greek tragedy," said frankly 
that Samson was " more simple and severe than Athens herself would 
have demanded. . . . Perhaps," his letter continues, "in your closet, 
and that of a few more, who unaffectedly admire genuine nature and 
antient simplicity, the Agonistes may hold a distinguished rank. 
Yet . . . unless one would be content with a very late and very learned 
posterity, Milton's conduct in this point should not be followed." * 

1 Page 183; ci.S.A., 293-4, 1745-8- 

* Pages 94-5; of. S. A., 1660, 1708-9, 1745-58. On page 100 Whiffen borrows from 
Milton's epic (iv. 32-7): 

O thou, that, with surpassing splendor adorned . . . 
To thee we call, O sun! 

* Glover in his Medea (1761) tried regular unrimed lyrics that clearly owe nothing to 
Milton, and Dr. Frank Sayers employed unrimed choruses with lines of varying length 
in his Dramatic Sketches of Northern Mythology (1790); but the "Sketches" are other- 
wise very different from Samson Agonistes, "the Greek form of dramatic writing" being 
used merely because it afforded "in its choruses the most favourable opportunity for 
the display of mythological imagery" (introduction ioMoina). His rejection of rime 
was part of a general theory (see p. 564 below) that presumably owed little to Samson, 
in which rime is used, though sparingly. Matthew Arnold also has unrimed lines of 
varying length in the choruses of his Merope and in many of the speeches of Empedocles 
on Etna. Of the English dramas that I have seen, the one most like Samson Agonistes 
is Andrew Becket's Socrates (1806). 

* Letter ii, in Works (1811), ii. 181-2. Mason criticized Samson simply as a poor 
model for an acting play, but the cock-sure Southey showed his Midas ears in this com- 



560 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

As this is almost the only point in which Mason did not follow Mil- 
ton's conduct, his opinion is the more impressive. 

The Translation from Horace 

Milton's famous version of Horace's ode to Pyrrha, "rendered 
almost word for word, without rhyme, according to the Latin meas- 
ure, as near as the language will permit," is probably better known 
to-day among Latin students than among the writers or readers of 
English verse. At least, the meter in which it is composed is rarely 
employed in modern poetry. But in the mid-eighteenth century, 
when new lyric forms were being sought and when almost every 
one translated Horace and was familiar with Milton, men turned 
to the measure more naturally. From 1700 to 1837 no fewer than 
eighty-three poems, and probably many more, were written in Mil- 
ton's Horatian stanza,^ which thus had a vogue almost as great, in 
proportion to the length and importance of the poem, as any of his 
other verse-forms enjoyed. It may be thought that the authors of 
some of these pieces took the unrimed stanza of two pentameter and 
two trimeter lines directly from Horace ; but this was not so natural 
a thing to do as it appears to be, for rimes seemed indispensable to 
lyrics, and whoever used Horace's measure — Marvell, for example, 
in his Horatian Ode upon CromwelVs Return from Ireland — used 
rime. Then, too, before most of these writers could have derived the 
meter for themselves, it had been given some currency by several 
ardent admirers and consistent imitators of Milton's short pieces. 

The credit for discovering the possibilities of the measure for lyric 
purposes does not belong to any one man. Milton in making his 
translation was trying, not to invent a new lyric form, but to see how 
closely he could follow Horace. Accordingly, he paid little heed to 
the unity of single lines and none to that of stanzas, printing and 
apparently conceiving his poem as sixteen continuous lines. The 
elder Thomas Warton was therefore something of a discoverer when, 
between 1744 and 1745, he employed the meter for an original poem.^ 
To be sure, his Ode to Taste, an uninspired tribute to the "beauteous 
Arts of fair antiquity," is likewise not divided into stanzas; but the 

ment : " Unrhymed lyrical measures had been tried by Milton with unhappy success 

There are parts in the choruses of the Samson A gonisies, wherein it is difficult to discover 
any principle of rhythm" (review of Sayers's works, Quart. Rev., 1827, xxxv. 211). 

1 See Bibl. Ill c. Four of them, it will be noticed, were among the poems written at 
Oxford, in 1 761-2, to celebrate the death of George II, the accession and marriage of 
George III, and the birth of the prince of Wales. 

* Warton died in 1745, and the ode refers to the death of Pope, which took place in 
May, 1744. For Warton's other imitations of Milton, see pp. 461-2 above. 



THE TRANSLATION FROM HORACE 56 1 

stanza conception is certainly present, as may be seen in these, the 
best lines: 

Or in some ruin'd Temple dost thou dwell 
Of ancient Rome, deserted of the World, 
Where prostrate lies in Dust 
The shapely Column's Height. 

Warton passed on his metrical discovery to his two sons, the elder of 
whom, Joseph, included among the odes that he published in 1746 
two in the meter of Milton's translation, one of which is "imitated 
from Horace." ^ Yet, as the poems are not attractive and are not 
printed with stanza divisions, they mark no advance over the 
father's work. Just when the younger Thomas Warton (the laureate 
and historian of EngKsh poetry) employed the measure in his render- 
ings of two of Horace's odes is uncertain, but probably later than his 
brother, for in 1746 he was only eighteen years old. Both of his 
translations are divided into stanzas, and one is marked "after the 
manner of Milton," — which indicates where the family got the 
meter. 

There is so little in any of these pieces to inspire imitation that the 
elder Warton's discovery would probably have interested few per- 
sons outside of the family if his elder son had not been a friend of 
William Collins. Writing to his brother Thomas sometime between 
May, 1745, and June, 1746, Joseph Warton remarked: "Collins met 
me in Surrey, at Guildford Races, when I wrote out for him my Odes, 
and he likewise communicated some of his to me : and being both in 
very high spirits, we took courage, resolved to join our forces, and to 
publish them immediately." ^ Perhaps it was through these odes 
which his friend "wrote out for him" that CoUins's attention was 
drawn to the unrimed stanza ; possibly he had already seen the Ode to 
Taste by Warton's father; or it may be that all three Wartons influ- 
enced his choice of the measure. At any rate, among the odes that 
he published in December, 1746, is one. To Evening, in the meter of 
Milton's translation from Horace. In its own field, that of the medi- 
tative lyric, this poem is hardly surpassed in all English literature, 
and certainly it has no equal — imless it be Smart's Song to David — 
among the lyrics of the hundred years that followed the dying-down 
of Restoration song. Without ceasing to be natural and tender, it 
achieves the classic finish and restraint, the finality, which is all too 
rare in English literature. And its beauty, we should observe, is due 
largely to the meter and to Collins' s marvellous handling of it. If 

1 A third, To Content, is printed in WooU's Memoirs of Joseph Warton (1806), 
140-42. 2 /J i^Yl. 



562 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

rime were added, if the lines were made all of the same length, if they 
did not melt into one another as objects do in the evening, or if the 
rhythm were more obvious, the charm would be gone. Is it any 
wonder that discerning poets were quick to imitate stanzas like 
these when they came upon them amid the welter of eighteenth- 
century banalities? 

Whose numbers, stealing thro' thy dark'ning vale, 
May not unseemly with its stillness suit. 

As, musing slow, I hail 

Thy genial lov'd return! . . . 

And hamlets brown, and dim-discover'd spires, 
And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all 

Thy dewy fingers draw 

The gradual dusky veil.^ 

It was unquestionably the Ode to Evening and not Milton's transla- 
tion or anything the Wartons wrote that made the meter popular. 
The subjects of the later poems written in the measure make this 
clear, for not a few of them deal with nature and at least twelve are 
on morning, evening, or night. Moreover, several of them borrow 
phrases from Collins. Milton doubtless had some direct influence; 
for many who used his unrimed stanza, William Woty, Michael 
Bruce, Mrs. Barbauld, the Delia Cruscans (Robert Merry and Mrs. 
Robinson), Richard Polwhele, Kirke White, Lamb's friend George 
Dyer, and Shelley, were affected by his other poems and almost cer- 
tainly knew his translation from Horace. Besides, several of them 
followed Milton and the two older Wartons in not using stanza di- 
visions. Yet, since poets seem to have been drawn to the meter 
primarily by their desire for new lyric forms, they are more likely to 
have found such a form in the Ode to Evening than in sixteen lines of a 
translation not divided into stanzas. 

Only two or three of the later poems have any esthetic value. The 
Horatian measure has, like blank verse, the great drawback of being 
very easy to write and very hard to write well; and few of those who 
attempted it had sufficient metrical sensitiveness or taste to achieve 
success, even if they had tried harder than they did. Mrs. Barbauld's 
pleasing Ode to Spring (1773), which was clearly inspired by Collins, 
is, however, worth quoting from: 

^ Each of these stanzas, it will be observed, is closely connected with the one that 
precedes it, a circumstance which suggests the influence of Milton and the Wartons and 
perhaps indicates that as originally written the Ode to Evening was not divided into 
stanzas. The younger Thomas Warton tells us, in his edition of Milton's minor poems, 
1785, p. 368, that Collins "had a design of writing many more Odes without rhyme." 



THE TRANSLATION FROM HORACE 563 

Now let me sit beneath the whitening thorn, 
And mark thy spreading tints steal o'er the dale; 

And watch with patient eye 

Thy fair unfolding charms. 

John Keble's Burial of the Dead (written in 1823) and Sara Cole- 
ridge's "O sleep, my Babe" (1837) have ionnd places in the Oxford 
Book of Verse; ^ but the truest poem in the meter since the Ode to 
Evening is by that inspired peasant, the half-starved, half-drunk, 
half-crazed John Clare. The thirty stanzas of his Autumn (1835) 
show the freshness, the deep love for nature, the keen observation, 
and the poetic gift that make all of Clare's best work attractive. He 
is far enough from the perfection and the magic of Collins; but not 
every writer can pen such a line as 

Ploughed lands, thin travelled with half-hungry sheep, 

or draw such pictures as this of the cow-boy trilling his "frequent, 
unpremeditated song," 

As on with plashy step, and clouted shoon. 
He roves, half indolent and self-employed. 

To rob the little birds 

Of hips and pendant haws, 

And sloes, dim covered as with dewy veils. 
And rambling bramble-berries, pulpy and sweet, 

Arching their prickly trails 

Half o'er the narrow lane. 

Milton's translation affected a number of pieces that were not writ- 
ten in precisely the same meter, for it gave impetus to the movement 
towards unrimed lyrics which goes back to the Elizabethans or even 
farther.^ Between 1698 and 1720 Samuel Say made free rimeless 
translations of two odes of Casimir and one of Horace, two of which 
(including that of Horace) resemble Milton's in employing unrimed 
quatrains with the last Hne in six syllables.^ Inasmuch as Say wrote 
a discriminating essay "On the Numbers of Paradise Lost," used 
a modification of the Nativity stanza in one of his poems, and put 

' For other poems by Keble and Miss Coleridge in the same meter, see Bibl. Ill c, 
1823, 1827, 1837, and for one by Keble in the Nativity stanza, III d, 1827. 

* See, for example, Spenser's sonnets (in Van der Noot's Theatre, 1569) and his iam- 
bics and hexameters (in the letters to Harvey); Sidney's "If mine eyes can speake " 
(in Arcadia, 1590, book i); Barnabe Barnes's elegy 21 and odes 18 and 20 (in Parthen- 
ophil and Parthenophe, 1593); Thomas Campion's English Sapphic, "Rose-checked 
Laura, come," and "Just beguiler" (in Observations in the Art of English Poesie, 1602); 
"A. W. 's" Sapphics, phaleuciacks, epigram, and hexameters (in Francis Davison's 
Poetical Rhapsody, 1602). 

^ For these two, see Bibl. Ill c, c. 1701-20 w. 



564 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

four of Horace's epistles into blank verse/ there can be little ques- 
tion as to how he came to discard rime in translating lyrics.'^ 

A number of the opponents of ''jingle" were, as we have seen, in 
favor of banishing it from all poetry,^ but between Say's day and 
that of the Wartons they did nothing towards executing their pur- 
pose. Nor is there any reason to believe that the Wartons, Collins, 
and their followers felt any hostility to rime (which they used in 
nearly all their poems), or that they adopted the measure of Milton's 
translation except as an experiment in a new meter. Richard West, 
reacting against the free paraphrases of Dryden, Congreve, and 
Cowley, and ''back'd by Milton's authority," was "entirely for a 
close translation" of Horace's odes;* but he said nothing against 
rime. Blake attacked it in the preface to Jerusalem, but used it in all 
his short pieces except the first seven of his earliest volume (1783). 
Nor did the movement against rime make much headway until 1 790, 
when Frank Sayers published his Dramatic Sketches of Northern 
Mythology, a collection of short, superficial, sentimental pieces 
abounding in unrimed choral odes with lines of varying length. Dur- 
ing the following year Sayers imitated the subject, meter, and con- 
tents of the Ode to Evening in his Ode to Morning and his Ode to Night; 
and two years later, in the course of a brief essay "Of English 
Metres" (a survey of earlier unrimed measures aside from blank 
verse), he remarked, "The measure used by Milton in his transla- 
tion from Horace has been well received : it is adopted by Collins in 
his Ode to Evening, and by other modern poets, with success." ^ 

The Dramatic Sketches was "the first book" that Southey "was 
ever master of money enough to order at a country bookseller's." ^ 
The volume made a profound impression on the young bard, who at 
that time had no decided poetic character of his own and was un- 
usually susceptible to the influence of others, following one poet or 
group of poets after another in rapid succession. The principal result 
of the Sketches was seen a few years later in the strange mythology 

1 See above, p. 90, and below, pp. 566-7. 

^ Isaac Watts's Day of Judgment "attempted in English Sapphick" (Horae Lyricae, 
1706, pp. 40-42), and the Rev. Dr. Shipley's lines written in 1738, To the Memory of a 
Gentleman ("Dodsley's Miscellany," 1758, v. 239-40), are unrimed odes that show no 
influence from Milton. 

2 See above, pp. 51-2. 

* Letter to Walpole, June i, 1736 {Correspondence of Gray, Walpole, etc., i. 79). An 
anonymous Ode to Virtue, "in blank lyric verse," appeared in 1767 (see Cril. Rev., xxiv. 
316). 

' Disquisitions Metaphysical and Literary (1793), 132- 

8 Southey to William Taylor, Jan. 23, 1803 (J. W, Robberds, Memoir of Taylor,. 
1843,1.447)- 



THE NATIVITY 565 

and the unrimed lines of different length which characterize Thalaba 
(1801); but between 1793 and 1799 Sayers's precepts and practice, 
strengthened by the influence of Collins/ led to Southey's composing 
some sixteen lyrics without rime. Three of these are in the meter of 
Milton's translation, and eight others employ slight variations of it.^ 
Southey, therefore, made more use of the measure than did any other 
poet. Yet nothing that he wrote in it belongs — with Campion's 
"Rose-cheeked Laura," Collins's Ode to Evening, Lamb's Old 
Familiar Faces, Termyson's "Tears, idle tears," the Philomela and 
some other pieces of Matthew Arnold, and Swinburne's Sapphics — 
among the few successful unrimed lyrics in English. 

The Nativity 

In sharp contrast with the vogue enjoyed by the translation from 
Horace is the neglect which has befallen the Nativity ode. For, 
splendid as this stanza is and masterly as is Milton's handling of it, 
the meter has made almost no impress on English verse. Perhaps 
our writers, who do not take kindly to elaborate stanzas that are not 
of their own invention, have not cared to use this one; but more 
probably the idea of doing so has never occurred to most of them. 
No doubt if some one had led the way, if Gray, for instance, had 
adopted the meter in his Elegy or Collins in his Ode to Evening, it 
would have had a wide vogue. To be sure, both Gray and Collins 
did employ variations of it, but not in a way that would be likely to 
give it popularity. For the eight lines that Gray wrote in the Nativ- 
ity meter he put into the least inspired of all his pieces, the Ode for 
Music (1769) ; 3 and Collins changed the stanza so much by omitting 
its last two lines that, even if his Ode to Simplicity (1746) had at- 

' " Every one who has an ear for metre and a heart for poetry," Southey wrote in the 
preface to the 1837 edition of his works, "must have felt how perfectly the metre of 
Collins's Ode to Evening is in accordance with the imagery and the feeling." Although 
he thought Milton's translation "uncouth ... in syntax as well as sound, and bearing no 
other resemblance to the Latin measure, which it was designed to imitate, than that it 
consists of two long and two short lines," he declared that it " presents the only example 
of a rhymeless stanza which can fairly be said to have become naturalized in our lan- 
guage " (review of Sayers's works, Quart. Rev., 1827, xxxv. 211). For this reference, and 
for other matters relating to Southey's obligation to Sayers, I am indebted to William 
Haller's Early Life of Southey (N. Y., 19 17), 77-86. 

2 See Bibl. Ill c, 1793-9 w. The other five are the Battle 0/ Pultowa, the Translation 
of a Greek Ode on Astronomy, The Huron's Address to the Dead, The Peruvian's Dirge over 
the Body of his Father, The Old Chikkasah to his Grandson. Southey also wrote one un- 
rimed poem in dactylics and one in sapphics. Thelwall printed eleven unrimed sapphics 
in his Poetical Recreations. 

' Lines 27-34, which Milton speaks (see p. 459 above). Gray changed the seventh 
line of the Nativity stanza from tetrameter to pentameter. 



566 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

tracted more attention, it would hardly have affected the vogue of 
Milton's poem. As might be expected, Collins handled his measure 
admirably, and in a poem to Simplicity he not unnaturally simplified 
the somewhat complex meter of the Nativity ode. An additional 
reason for thinking that he had the earlier poem in mind is his use of 
four phrases suggested by the 1645 volume, one of which occurs in 
the last of these lines: 

By all the honey'd store 

On Hybla's thymy shore, 
By all her blooms, and mingled murmurs dear, 

By her whose lovelorn woe 

In ev'ning musings slow 
Sooth'd sweetly sad Electra's poet's ear.^ 

In view of the close friendship between Collins and Joseph Warton 
that led to their exchanging copies of their odes six months before 
pubHcation, there is undoubtedly a direct connection between the 
Ode to Simplicity and Warton's odes To Superstition and To a Gentle- 
man upon his Travels thro^ Italy. Warton used the same meter as his 
friend, except that his first, second, fourth, and fifth lines are tetra- 
meter, instead of trimeter as in Collins and Milton, a change for the 
worse. There can be little question as to the source of this passage : 

So by the Magi hail'd from far. 

When Phoebus mounts his early car. 
The shrieking ghosts to their dark charnels flock; 

The fuU-gorg'd wolves retreat, no more 

The prowling lionesses roar, 
But hasten with their prey to some deep-cavern'd rock.^ 

But it was not Collins, Warton, or Gray who first made use of 
Milton's Christmas hymn. Robert Baron had taken several expres- 
sions from it as early as 1647 5 ^ the laureate Nahum Tate had para- 
phrased ten lines to make up his two stanzas On Snow falVn in 
Autumn, and dissolved by the Sun;^ and about 1730 Samuel Say had 

* Compare this with Comus, 526, and with line 13 of Milton's sonnet, "Captain, or 
Colonel," etc.; also compare "trailing pall . . . decent maid In Attic robe" (lines 9-1 1) 
with Penseroso, 97-8, 34-7, and "the meeting soul" (line 48) with Allegro, 138. 

2 To Superstition, stanza v (cf. Nativity, 22-3, 176-8, 232-4). The idea of the Ode to 
Superstition is much the same as that of the Nativity, 173-236; and lines 13-14 mention 
the sacrifice of infants to Moloch (cf. Nativity, 205-12). 

' On Baron's plagiarism of Milton, see above, pp. 427-8. Bishop Thomas Ken's 
verses On the Nativity {Works, 1721,!. 31-7), which he wrote before 1711, may owe 
something to Milton's. 

* Nature now stript of all her Summer-Dress, 
And modestly surmizing, 'twere unmeet 
For each rude Eye to view her Nakedness; 

Around her bare Limbs wraps this Snowy Sheet. 



THE NATIVITY 567 

used variations of it in his irregular metrical paraphrase of the ninety- 
seventh psalm. Say's tenth stanza, a very free rendering of "Zion 
heard and was glad," is the one that owes most to the Nativity: 

Thus, while Substantial Darkness shrouds 
The Chamian Heaven in Solid Clouds, 
And with black Wings o'er frighted Mizraim broods; 
In Goshen's favour'd Land 
Thy Chosen Israel stand. 
Enjoy the Sun's enlivening Ray, 
• And wonder what Strange Night Usurps th' Egyptian Day! ^ 

One anonymous eighteenth-century writer, besides copying whole 
lines from Milton's ode, adopted its stanza without change. His 
poem, The Abolition of Catholicism, ** written on learning the arrival 
of the French at Rome in 1798," has passages as flagrantly Miltonic 
as this: 

Long absent Justice then 
Shall back return to men, 
With meas'ring look her scales and compass minding; 
And Peace, with myrtle wand, 
Shall take no fleeting stand. 
From either foot her turtle-wings unbinding; 

And orb a rainbow through the azure sky. 
In token that the tempest-clouds are now gone by.^ 

What seems to be a variation of the Nativity measure occurs in one 
of the splendid choruses of Shelley's Hellas (1822). The similarity is 
seen most clearly in these lines, the idea and cadence no less than the 
meter of which may be derived from Milton's poem: 

So fleet, so faint, so fair. 

The Powers of earth and air 
Fled from the folding-star of Bethlehem: 

ApoUo, Pan, and Love, 

And even Olympian Jove 
Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them.' 

The wanton Sun the slight- wrought Shroud removes, 
T'embrace the naked Dame, whose fertile Womb 
Admits the lusty Paramour's warm Love'5, 

And is made big with the fair Spring to come 
(Poems, 1677, pp. 88-9; cf. Nativity, 32-42). This borrowing was called to my atten- 
tion by Mr. B. C. Clough. 

1 Note also, in stanza vii, the meter and the reference to Dagon (cf. Nativity, 199), 
who is not mentioned in the psalm. 

'^ Mo. Mag., V. 368 (cf. Nativity, 141-3, 45-52). Compare also the first, second, and 
last stanzas with Nativity, 183, 189-96, 202, 214; and note "tears such as angels weep" 
(line 20, from P. L., i. 620). 

3 Lines 229-34; cf. Nativity, 173-228, particularly 221-8. 



568 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 

None of the uncertainty that may be felt in regard to the source of 
Shelley's meter exists in the case of Jean Ingelow's Song for the Night 
of Christ's Resurrection (1867), for this is frankly labelled "a humble 
imitation" and is prefaced by a quotation from the Nativity. More- 
over, Milton not only furnishes the stanza and suggests the subject 
and title, but contributes a simile as well as a few words and rimes.^ 
His injfluence is felt most strongly in these lines: 

Or from the Morians' land 
See worshipped Nilus bland, 
Taking the silver road he gave the world, 
To wet his ancient shrine 
With waters held divine, 
And touch his temple steps with wavelets curled, 
And list, ere darkness change to gray, 
Old minstrel-throated Memnon chanting in the day. 

Austin Dobson's Miltonic Exercise, "written, by request, for the 
celebration at Christ's College, Cambridge, July 10, 1908," was too 
obviously made to order to be significant, though it is interesting to 
see that Mr. Dobson employed the Collins-Warton adaptation of the 
Nativity meter.- The most convincing tribute to the beauty of the 
original measure is to be found in the use of it by so great a master of 
prosody and so fertile an inventor of new verse-forms as Swinburne. 
In his famous Poems and Ballads (first series, 1866) are some two 
hundred hues, To Victor Hugo, which employ it but change the last 
line from hexameter to pentameter. Here is one of the many ad- 
mirable stanzas: 

Sunbeams and bays before 

Our master's servants wore, 
For these Apollo left in all men's lands ; 

But far from these ere now 

And watched with jealous brow 
Lay the bhnd lightnings shut between God's hands, 

And only loosed on slaves and kings 
The terror of the tempest of their wings. 

The excellence of this particular last line may seem to justify Swin- 
burne's change, but a reading of the entire piece leads rather to the 
opposite conclusion; for he loses the crescendo at the close of the 

1 Some of the words are "eyn" (line 105, cf. Nativity, 223), "curtained" (114, of the 
setting moon, cf. Nativity, 229-30, of the rising sun), "ocedn," riming with "began" 
(142, cf. Nativity, 66). The simile in next to the last stanza is like that in Milton's 
next to the last, besides beginning in the same way; and the first two lines of the last 
stanza of each poem have the same rimes, as well as similar ideas and phraseology. 

^ It is presumably by chance that the second stanza of Siegfried Sassoon's Before the 
Battle {Old Huntsman, N. Y., 1920, p. 75) is in the Nativity meter, with the seventh Une 
omitted. 



THE NATIVITY 569 

stanza, as well as the subtle "proportion of the rise in line-length from 
6,10 to 8,12."^ The poet himself could not have been satisfied with 
his innovation, for when he returned to the stanza three years later, 
in his Eve of Revolution,"^ he kept Milton's final hexameter. In this 
poem, however, he introduced another change by prefixing eight 
pentameter lines riming ah ah ah ah. Only a master is competent 
to criticize Swinburne's meters; but my own feeling is that the eight 
lines of uniform length which rime alternately do not combine 
happily with the eight of varying length — four of them very short 
— which rime irregularly. Most of the superb things in the poem, 
including the best of the twenty-seven stirring lines in praise of Mil- 
ton,' seem to me to be in the non-Miltonic meter. Swinburne, how- 
ever, liked the stanza well enough to use it twice again, — in the 
long Song for the Centenary of Landor, and in the New-Year Ode to 
Victor Hugo, where the lines in the Nativity measure contain some 
excellent poetry. 

In his last book of poems, A Channel Passage, he tried still an- 
other variation, dropping the initial unaccented syllable in each of 
the first two lines and inserting after the fifth another line of three 
feet.^ But this experiment seems to have pleased him no better, for 
in the same volume he twice returned to the original stanza,^ which 
he had used three times previously.^ As might be expected, the 
poems he wrote in the measure or in variations of it are free from the 
stiffness that mars some of Milton's lines, but they tend to be wordy 
and invertebrate, to gain suppleness and fluidity by sacrificing the 
dignity, the concentrated power, and the sonorous splendor of the 
earlier master. Yet does not the fact that he made use of some form 
of the meter no fewer than eleven times,^ beginning with his first 
volume of poems and ending only with his last, — does not this fact 
constitute a rare tribute from one of the greatest singers of a great 
century to the prosodic genius of a college youth and to the Christ- 
mas hymn he composed nearly two hundred and fifty winters 
before? 

^ Saintsbury, English Prosody, ii. 210. 

^ Written in 1869; published in Songs before Sunrise, 1871. 

' See stanzas 14-16. These lines make it practically certain that Swinburne derived 
his stanza from Milton. I have to thank Mr. Herbert Cory, recently assistant-professor 
of English at the University of California, for calling my attention, nearly fifteen years 
ago, to the indebtedness of two of these poems to the Nativity ode. 

* In High Oaks, and its continuation, Barking Hall. 

' In Astraa Victrix, and in section v of Altar of Righteousness. 

' In Blessed among Women and Insurrection in Candia {Songs before Sunrise, 1871), 
and in the epodes in Birthday of Victor Hugo {Songs of the Springtides, 1880). 

^ See Bibl. Ill d, below. 



APPENDICES 



APPENDIX A 

PARALLEL PASSAGES SHOWING EXPRESSIONS 
PROBABLY BORROWED FROM MILTON 



POPEi 

The birds, on ev'ry bloomy spray. 

O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray. 

Here the bright crocus and blue vi'let glow. 
And glowing violets. 
The glowing violet. 

And ev'ry plant that drinks the morning dew. 
And every herb thai sips the dew. 

Rough satyrs dance. 
Rough Satyrs danced. 

While lab 'ring oxen, spent with toil and heat. 
In their loose traces from the field retreat. 

What time the labour'd ox 
In his loose traces from the furrow came. 

Nor rivers winding through the vales below, 
So sweetly warble, or so smoothly flow. 
Fountains, and ye that warble, as ye flow. 

In some still ev'ning, when the whisp'ring breeze 
Pants on the leaves, and dies upon the trees. 
Or usker'd with a shower still. 
When the gust hath blown his fill. 
Ending on the rustling leaves. 

Crowned with tufted trees. 

To happy Convents, bosom'd deep in vines. 

The tufted trees. 

And spiry tops, the tufted trees above, 

Of Circe's palace bosom'd in the grove. 

Towers and battlements it sees 

Bosom'd high in tufted trees. 

The weeping amber, or the balmy tree. 

Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm. 

The yellow carp, in scales bedropped with gold. 
Shew to the sun their waved coats dropt with gold. [Of fish. 



Pastorals, i. 23. 
Nightingale sonnet, I. 

lb. i. 31. 
Odyssey, v. 94. 
Lycidas, 145. 

Pastorals, ii. 32. 
Penseroso, 172. 

lb. ii. 50. 

Lycidas, 34. 

lb. iii. 61-2. 

ComUS, 2QI-2. 

lb. iv. 3-4. 
P. L. V. 195. 

lb. iv. 79-80. 

Penseroso, 127-g. 

Windsor Forest, 27. 
Dunciad, iv. 301. 
Odyssey, v. 513. 

Odyssey, x. 175-6. 

Allegro, 77-S. 

Windsor Forest, 30. 
P. L. iv. 248. 

lb. 144. 

P. L. vii 406. 



' Most of these parallels are selected from those given in the Elwin-Courthope edition of Pope, Gilbert 
Wakefield's edition of Pope's Homer, and Mary Leather's article. Pope as a Student of Milton, in Englische 
Studien, xxv. 398-410; some I have myself noted. None of the Iliad or Odyssey parallels can be explained 
by similarities between Homer and Milton; most of the passages, indeed, owe nothing to Homer but are 
original with Pope. 



574 



APPENDIX A 



The gulphy Lee his sedgy tresses rears; 
And sullen Mole, that hides his diving flood. 

Or gulfy Dun . . . 
Or sullen Mole, that runneth underneath, 
. ... or of sedgy Lea. 

Or those green isles, where headlong Titan steeps 
His hissing axle in th' Atlantic deeps. 
And the gilded car of day 
His glowing axle doth allay 
In the steep Atlantic stream. 

Mean time the vig'rous dancers beat the ground. 
Come, knit hands, and beat the ground 
In a light fantastic round. 

The dapper elves their moon-light sports pursue. 

The fairies ... So featly tripped. 

Trip the pert faeries and the dapper elves. 

Full oft I drain'd the spicy nut-brown bowl. 
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale. 

In air self-balanced hung the globe below. 
Let earth unbalanced from her orbit fly. 
And Earth, self-balanced, on her centre hung. 

On Doric pillars of white marble reared, 
Crowned with an architrave of antique mold, 
And sculpture rising on the roughened gold. 
With pomp of various architrave o'erlay'd. 

Doric pillars overlaid 
With golden architrave; nor did there want 
Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven. 

The growing tow'rs like exhalations rise. 
A fabric huge Rose like an exhalation. 

Barbaric gold. 
Barbaric pearl and gold. 

Wide vaults appear, and roofs of fretted gold. 
The roof was fretted gold. 

Ere warning Phoebus touched his trembling ears. 
Phoebus replied, and touch'd my trembling ears. 

Amaranthine bow'rs. 

Blissful bowers Of amaranthine shade. 

(Of heaven in each 

And those love-darting eyes must roll no more. 
Love-darting eyes, or tresses like the morn. 

He from thick films shall purge the visual ray. 
His visual ball. 
Sharpened his visual ray. 

(The first case was pointed 

He wipes the tears for ever from our eyes. 
All tears are wiped for ever from all eyes. 
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes. 



Windsor Forest, 346-7. 

Vacation Exercise, 92-7. 
lb. 387-8 (original reading). 

Comus, 95-7. 
January and May, 353. 

Comus, 143-4. 

lb. 460. 
lb. 618-20. 
Comus, 118. 

Wife of Bath, 214. 
Allegro, 100. 

Temple of Fame, 13. 
Essay on Man, i. 251. 
P. L. vii. 242. 



Temple of Fame, 76-8. 
Odyssey, xxi. 46. 



P. L. i. 714-16. 

Temple of Fame, 91. 
P. L. i. 710-11. 

lb. 94. 
P. L. a. 4. 

lb. 138. 

P. L. i. 717. 

Essay on Criticism, 131 (variant). 
Lycidas, 77. 

St. Cecilia, 76. 
P. L. xi. 77-8. 
case.) 

Elegy to an Unfortunate Lady, 34. 
Comus, 753. 

Messiah, 39. 
Odyssey, ix. 454- 
P. L. Hi. 620; cf. xi. 415. 
out by Pope.) 

Messiah (ist ed.), 46. 
Epilogue to Satires, i. 103. 
Lycidas, 181. 



PARALLELS — POPE 



575 



In adamantine chains shall Death be bound. 
Arm'd in adamantine chains. 
In War and Discord's adamantine chain. 
In adamantine chains. 

For spirits, freed from mortal laws, with ease 
Assume what sexes and what shapes they please. 

For Spirits, when they please, 
Can either sex assume, or both . . . 

. ... in what shape they choose. 

Dipped in the richest tincture of the skies. 
And colours dipt in heaven . . . 
Sky-tinctured grain. 

Four knaves in garbs succinct. 

A Priest succinct in amice white. 

His vest succinct then girding round his waist. 

Aside they lay 
Their garments, and succinct the victims slay. 
His habit fit for speed succinct. 

Fate urged the shears, and cut the sylph in twain, 

(But airy substance soon unites again). Rape of the Lock, iii. 151-2. 

(" See Milton, lib. vi. 330, of Satan cut asunder by the Angel Michael" : Pope's note.) 



Messiah, 47. 

Song by Person of Quality, i{ 

Iliad, xiii. 452. 

P. L. i. 48. 

Rape of the Lock, i. 69-70. 



P. L. i. 423-8. 
lb. ii. 65. 

P. L. V. 2S3-5. 

lb. iii. 41. 
Dunciad, iv. 549. 
Odyssey, xiv. 83. 

Odyssey, xvii. 199-200. 
P. L. iii. 643. 



Snakes on rolling spires. 

[Satan] erect Amidst his circling spires. 

While Time, with stfU career, 
Wafts on his gentle wing his eightieth year. 
This subtle thief of life, this paltry time. 
To whom Time bears me on his rapid wing. 
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, 
Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year! . . 
Toward which Time leads me. 



lb. iv. 43. 

P. L. ix. 501-2. 



Imitation of Martial, 1-2. 
Horace's Epistles, II. ii. 76. 
Dunciad, iv. 6. 



Sonnet, "How soonhath Time," 1-2, 12. 



Ye grots and caverns, shagged with horrid thorn ! 
So the rough rock had shagg'd Ulysses' hands. 
By grots and caverns shagg'd with horrid shades. 

I have not yet forgot myself to stone. 
Forget thyself to marble. 

And the dim windows shed a solemn light. 
And storied windows richly dight. 
Casting a dim religious light. 

(Of a church in each case.) 

But o'er the twilight groves. 
Arched walks of twilight groves. 

And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes. 
And shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance filVd 
The circuit wide. [Said of an angel.] 



Eloisa to Abelard, 20. 
Odyssey, v. 553. 
Comus, 42g. 

Eloisa to Abelard, 24. 
Penseroso, 42. 

lb. 144. 
Penseroso, 159-60. 

lb. 163. 
Penseroso, 133. 

lb. 218. 

P. L. V. 2S6-r. 



Low-brow'd rocks hang nodding o'er the deeps. lb. 244. 

Under ebon shades and low-brow'd rocks. Allegro, 8. 

Oblivion of low-thoughted care. lb. 298. 

With low-thoughted care. Comus, 6. 



576 



APPENDIX A 



The chequer'd shade. 
In the chequer'd shade. 
In the chequer'd shade. 

Or in the golden cowslip's velvet head. 
O'er the cowslip's velvet head. 

But vindicate the ways of God to man. 
A nd justify the ways of God to vien. 

Yonder argent fields above. [Of the firmament.] 
Those argent fields. [Of the moon.] 

Favoured man by touch ethereal slain. 
With touch ethereal of Heaven's fiery rod. 

Next his grim idol smeared with human blood. 
Dropping with Infants' blood, and Mothers' tears. 

First, Moloch, horrid king, besmear'd with blood 

Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears . . . 

Their children's cries uuheard, that pass'd through fire 

To his grim idol. 



To Mr. Gay, 7. 
Dunciad, iv. 125. 
Allegro, g6. 

Lamentation of Glumdalclitch, 48. 
Comus, 8gS. 

Essay on Man, i. 16. 
P. L. i. 26. 

lb. i. 41. 

P. L. Hi. 460. 

lb. iii. 68. 

Samson, 54g. 

lb. iii. 266. 
Dunciad, iv. 142. 



P. L. i. 392-6. 



(The second case was pointed out by Pope.) 



Ye little stars! hide your diminish'd rays. 
All the stars Hide their diminish'd heads. 

And bring all Paradise before your eye. 
And bring all Heaven before mine eyes. 

To make men happy, and to keep them so. 
What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so. 

To see themselves fall endlong into beasts. 
And downward fell into a grovelling swine. 



(Of Circe's guests in each case.) 



Moral Essays, iii. 282. 
P. L. iv. 34-5, 

lb. iv. 148. 
Penseroso, 166. 

Horace's Epistles, I. vi. 2. 
P. R. iv. 362. 

Satires of Donne, iv. 167. 
Comus, 53. 



To wholesome solitude, the nurse of sense: 
Where Contemplation prunes her ruffled wings. 

And Wisdom's self 
Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude. 
Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation, 
She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings, 
That . . . Were alUo ruffled. 

And opes the temple of Eternity. 
That opes the palace of Eternity. 

Daughter of Chaos and eternal Night. 
Dread Chaos, and eternal Night. 
/ sung of Chaos and eternal Night. 

Here pleas'd behold her mighty wings outspread. 
With mighty wings outspread. 

In clouded Majesty here Dulness shone. 
The Moon, Rising in clotided majesty. 

(Pointed out by Pope.) 

He roU'd his eyes that witness'd huge dismay. 

Round he throws his baleful eyes, 
That witness'd huge affliction and dismay. 



lb. iv. 185-6. 



Comus, 375-80. 

Epilogue to Satires, ii. 235. 
Comus, 14. 

Dunciad, i. 12. 
lb. iv. 2. 
P. L. iii. 18. 

lb. i. 27. 
P. L. i. 20. 

lb. i. 45- 

P. L. iv. 606-7. 



lb. (ist ed.), i. 105. 
P. L. i. 56-7. 



PARALLELS — POPE 



577 



High on a gorgeous seat, that far out-shone 
Henley's gilt tub, or Fleckno's Irish throne, 
Or that where on her Curls the Public pours, 
All-bounteous, fragrant Grains and Golden show'rs, 
Great Gibber sate. 

High on a throne, with stars of silver grac'd. 
High on a throne the king each stranger plac'd. 
High on a throne of royal state, which far 
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, 
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand 
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, 
Satan exalted sat. 



Dunciad, ii. 1-5. 
Iliad, xviii. 457. 
Odyssey, xv. 147. 



P. L. ii. 1-5. 



So from the Sun's broad beam in shallow urns 

Heav'n's twinkling Sparks draw light, and point their horns. Dunciad, ii. 1 1- 1 2. 

Hither [to the sun], as to their fountain, other stars 

Repairing, in their golden urns draw light. 

And hence the morning planet gilds her horns. P. L. vii. 364-6. 



On feet and wings, and flies, and wades, and hops; 
So lab'ring on, with shoulders, hands, and head. 
O'er hills, o'er dales, o'er crags, o'er rocks they go. 
O^er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, 
With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way, 
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies. 



lb. ii. 64-5. 
Iliad, xxiii. 141. 



P. L. ii. 948-50. 



(The first case was pointed out by Pope.) 



With arms expanded Bernard rows his state. 
Rows H er state with oary feet. [Of a swan.] 

(Pointed out by Pope.) 

His papers light fly diverse, tost in air. 

The scatter'd Trojan bands Fly diverse. 

Rolls diverse. 

Then both [Sin and Death] . . . 

Flew diverse . . . Tost up and down. 

In naked majesty Oldmixon stands. 
In naked majesty seem'd lords of all. 

Shaking the horrors of his sable brows. 
The wood. 
Whose shady horrours on a rising brow 
Wav'd high, and frown'd. 

This drear wood, 
The nodding horror of whose shady brows. 

As under seas Alpheus' secret sluice 
Bears Pisa's off'rings to his Arethuse. 
Divine Alpheus, who, by secret sluice. 
Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse. 



Dunciad, ii. 67. 
P. L. vii. 43Q-40. 



lb. ii. 114. 

Iliad, xiv. 166-7; cf. xxi. 4. 

Odyssey, v. 469. 

P. L. X. 282-7; cf. iv. 234. 

Dunciad, ii. 283. 
P. L. iv. 2 go. 

lb. ii. 327. 



Odyssey, v. 613-15. 
Comus, 37-8. 

Dunciad, ii. 341- 2. 
Arcades, 30-31. 



Smit with love of Poesy and Prate. lb. ii. 382. 

Smit with the love of Sister Arts. Epistle to Jervas, 13. 

Smit with love of honourable deeds. Iliad, i. 354. 

Smit with the love of sacred song. P. L. Hi. 2g. 

(The first case was pointed out by Pope.) 



578 APPENDIX A 

Why should I sing, what bards the nightly Muse 

Did slumb'ring visit? Dunciad, ii. 421-2. 

Of my celestial patroness, who deigns 

Her nightly visitation unimplored, 

And dictates to me slumbering. P. L. ix. 21-3. 

Where Brown and Mears unbar the gates of Light. lb. iii. 28. 

Unbarr'd the gates of light. P. L. vi. 4. 

(Pointed out by Pope.) 

Behold the wonders of th' oblivious Lake. lb. iii. 44. 

The oblivious pool. P. L. i. 266. 

For this our Queen unfolds to vision true 

Thy mental eye, for thou hast much to view. lb. iii. 61-2. 

(Pointed out by Pope.^) 

Booth in his cloudy tabernacle shrin'd. lb. iii. 267. 

She in a cloudy tabernacle Sojourn' d. P. L. vii. 248-9. 

Of datkness visible so much be lent. lb. iv. 3. 

No light, but rather darkness visible. P. L. i. 63. 

He, kingly, did but nod. lb. iv. 207. 

He kingly from his state Inclined not. P. L. xi. 24^50. 

(Pointed out by Pope.) 

It fled, I foUow'd; now in hope, now pain; 

It stopt, I stopt; it mov'd, I mov'd again. lb. iv. 427-8. 

/ started back, 
It started back; but pleased I soon returned, 

Pleased it returned as soon. P. L. iv. 462-4. 

(Pointed out by Pope.) 

Let others creep by timid steps, and slow. lb. iv. 465. 

Now far the last, with pensive pace and slow. Odyssey, ix. 531. 

Eurylochus, with pensive steps and slow. Odyssey, x. 286. 

Pensive and slow . . . The King arose. Odyssey, xiii. 235-6. 

They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow. P. L. xii. 648. 

Satan had journeyed on, pensive and slow. P. L. iv. ij^. 

At one bound o'erleaping all his laws. Dunciad, iv. 477. 

At one slight bound high overleaped all bound. P. L. iv. 181. 

In amice white. lb. iv. 549. 

In amice gray. P. R. iv. 42J. 

Hurl'd headlong downward from th' etherial height. Iliad, i. 761. 
And hurl them flaming, headlong to the ground. lb. viii. 495. 

Hurl'd headlong flaming from the ethereal sky. P. L. i. 45. 

1 Pope's note: "This has a resemblance to that passage in Milton, book xi. where the Angel — 

To noble sights from Adam's eye remov'd 
The film; then purg'd with Euphrasie and Rue 
The visual nerve — For he had much to see. 

There is a general allusion in what follows to that whole episode." To quote from the arguments of the 
two poems, Settle "takes" Cibber "to a Mount ot Vision, from whence he shows him the past triumphs 
of the Empire of Dulness, then the present, and lastly the future"; just as the angel leads Adam "up 
to a high hill" and "sets before him in vision what shall happen till the Flood." 



PARALLELS — POPE 



579 



From rank to rank she darts her ardent eyes. 
Thro' the thick files he darts his searching eyes. 
Thro' all the war He darts his anxious eye. 
He through the armed files Darts his experienced eye. 

Thick as autumnal leaves. 
Thick as autumnal leaves. 

And Sangar's stream ran purple with their blood. 
While smooth Adonis from his native rock 
Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood. 

He shook his hoary locks, and thus replied. 
The lord of thunders view'd, and stern bespoke. 
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake. 

Thus they in heav'n. 
Thus they in Heaven. 

[Mars] shakes a spear that casts a dreadful light. 
[Death] shook a dreadful dart. 

Involve in clouds th' eternal gates of day. 
Within thick clouds and dark tenfold involved. 

Earth trembled as he strode. 
Hell trembled as he strode. 

Slow from his seat the rev'rend Priam rose: 
His godlike aspect deep attention drew. 

With grave Aspect he rose. . . . his look 
Drew audience and attention still as night. 

As deep beneath th' infernal centre hurl'd, 

As from that centre to th' ethereal world. lb. viii. 19- 20. 

As far removed from God and light of Heaven 

As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole. P.L.i.73-4. 

(Pointed out by Pope.) 

And smil'd superiour on his best-belov'd. lb. viii. 48. 

Smiling with superiour love. lb. xiv. 387. 

Smiled with superior love. P. L. iv. 49g. 

(A reference in each case to Jupiter's smiling on Juno or Minerva.) 



lb. ii. 525. 
lb. iv. 235. 
lb. xvii. 90-91. 
P. L. i. 567-8. 

lb. ii. 970. 
P. L. i. 302. 

lb. iii. 250. 

P. L. i. 45c^5i. 

lb. iv. 369. 
lb. V. 1093. 
Lycidas, 112. 

lb. V. 523. 
P. L. iii. 416. 

lb. V. 729. 
P. L. ii. 672. 

lb. V. 932. 
P. R. i. 41. 

lb. vii. 256. 
P. L. ii. 676. 



lb. vii. 441-2. 
P. L. ii. joo-308. 



Their strength he withers. 
That wither'd all their hearts. 

That wither'd all their strength. 



lb. viii. 96. 
Odyssey, xxii. 40. 
P. L. vi. 850. 



Words, mix'd with sighs, thus bursting from his breast. Hiad, ix. 22. 
Words interwove with sighs found out their way. P. L. i. 621. 



And sweat laborious days. 
And live laborious days. 

O friend! I hear some step of hostile feet, 
Moving this way, or hast'ning to the fleet. 
O friends, I hear the tread of nimble feet 
Hasting this way. 

Stands collected in himself. 
Stood in himself collected. 



lb. ix. 431. 
Lycidas, 72. 

lb. X. 405-6. 

P. L. iv. 866-7. 

lb. xi. 511. 
P. L. ix. 673. 



580 APPENDIX A 

O'er his broad back his moony shield he threw. Iliad, xi. 672. 

His shield (a broad circumference) he bore. lb. xxi. 688. 

And now his shoulders bear the massy shield. Odyssey, xxii. 138. 

His ponderous shield, 
Ethereal temper, massy, large, atid round. 
Behind him cast. The broad circumference 
Hung on his shoulders like the moon. P. L. i. 284- j. 

And threats his foU'wers with retorted eye. Iliad, xi. 695. 

And with retorted scorn his back he turned. P. L. v. go6. 

Flam'd in the front of heav'n. lb. xi. 871. 

Flames in the forehead of the morning sky. Lycidas, 171. 

(Of the rising sun in each case.) 

Now rushing in, the furious chief appears. 

Gloomy as Night! lb. xii. 553-4- 

He on his impious foes right onward drove, 

Gloomy as night. P. L. vi. 831-2. 

Th' enormous monsters, rolling o'er the deep. 

Gambol around him on the wat'ry way; 

And heavy whales in awkward measures play. lb. xiii. 43-5. 

Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait. 

Tempest the ocean. There leviathan, 

Hugest of living creatures, on the deep. P. L. vii. 411-ij. 

Bears, tigers, ounies, pards, GambolVd before them. P. L. iv. 344-5. 

Or pine, fit mast for some great admiral. lb. xiii. 494. 

Or pine (fit mast for some great admiral). lb. xvi. 592. 

The tallest pine 
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast 
Of some great ammiral. P. L. i. 292- 4. 

Convok'd to council, weigh the sum of things. lb. xiii. 930. 

Consulting on the sum of things. . P. L. vi. 673. 

A shout, that tore heav'n's concave, and above. lb. xiii. 1060. 

A shout that tore Hell's concave, and beyond. P. L. i. 542. 

The Goddess with the charming eyes 
Glows with celestial red, and thus replies: 
"Is this a scene for love?" lb. xiv. 373-5. 

The Angel, with a smile tltat glow'd 
Celestial rosy red, love's proper hue. Answer' d P. L. viii. 618-20. 

Veil'd in a mist of fragrance him they found. lb. xv. 1 74. 

Veil'd in a cloud of fragrance, where she stood. P. L. ix. 425. 

Else had my wrath, heav'n's thrones all shaking round, 

Burn'd to the bottom of the seas profound. lb. xv. 252-3. 

Eternal wrath 
Burn'd after them to the bottomless pit. P. L. vi. 865- 6. 

(Pope says, "Milton has a thought very like it in his fourth book," and quotes 

P. L. iv. 991 ff.) 

Dire was the hiss of darts. lb. xv. 356. 

Dire was the noise 
Of conflict; overhead the dismal hiss 
Of fiery darts. P. L. vi. 211-13. 



PARALLELS — POPE 



S8l 



In heav'nly panoply divinely bright. 

In brazen panoply [armor]. 

In arms they stood Of golden panoply. 

He, in celestial panoply all arm'd 

Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought. 

And Amatheia with her amber hair. 
Thy amber-dropping hair. 

[Vulcan's tripods] instinct with spirit roU'd. 
Forth rushed . . . The chariot of Paternal Deity 
Itself instinct with spirit. 

Frequent and full. [Of an assembly.] 
Frequent and thick. [Of fence-rails.] 
Frequent and full. [Of an assembly.] 

Like the red star, that from his flaming hair 
Shakes down diseases, pestilence and war. 

And like a comet burn'd, 
That fires the length of Ophiiichus huge 
In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair 
Shakes pestilettce and war. 

Smooth-gliding without step. 
Smooth-sliding without step. 

The huge dolphin tempesting the main. 

Bended dolphins play; part, huge of bulk . 
Tempest the ocean. 

The waves flow after, wheresoe'er he wheels, 
And gather fast, and murmur at his heels. 
So when a peasant. 

[Iris] Meteorous the face of Ocean sweeps, 
Refulgent gliding o'er the sable deeps. 
Gliding meteorous, as evening mist 
Risen from a river o'er the marish glides, 
And gathers gromid fast at the labourer's heel. 

He said, and stood, collected in his might. 
Collecting all his might, dilated stood. 

Waves in mazy errours lost. 
Rolling . . . With mazy error. 



lb. xvii. 233. 
Odyssey, xxii. 130; cf. xxiv. 577. 
P. L. vi. 526-7. 

P. L. vi. 760-61. 

Iliad, xviii. 64. 
Comus, 86 J. 

lb. xviii. 442. 

P. L. vi. 749-52. 

lb. xix. 48, xxiii. 38; Odyssey, xxiv. 482. 
Odyssey, xiv. 17. 
P. L. i. 797. 

Iliad, xix. 412-13. 



P. L. a. 708- II. 

lb. XX. 375. 
P. L. viii. 302. 

lb. xxi. 30. 

P. L. vii. 410-12. 



lb. xxi. 287-9. 



lb. xxiv. 101-2. 



P. L. xii. 629-31. 

lb. xxi. 675. 
P. L. iv. 986. 

lb. xxiii. 178. 
P. L. iv. 238-9. 



(Of a stream in each case.) 

Embracing rigid with implicit hands. lb. xxiii. 823. 
And fast beneath, in woolly curls inwove. 

There cling implicit. Odyssey, ix. 513-14- 

And bush with frizzled hair implicit. P. L. vii. 323. 

Now Twilight veil'd the glaring face of Day, 

And clad the dusky fields in sober gray. Iliad, xxiv. 427-8. 

And twilight gray her ev'ning shade extends. Odyssey, iii. 422. 

Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray 

Had in her sober livery all things clad. P. L. iv. 598-9. 

There stands a rock, high eminent and steep. Odyssey, iii. 374. 

Amid them stood the Tree of Life, High eminent. P. L. iv. 218-19. 

And stoops incumbent on the rolling deep. lb. v. 63. 

Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air, P. L. i. 226. 



582 



APPENDIX A 



Some close design, or turn of womankind. 
To work in close design, by fraud or guile. 

Join Thy pleaded reason. 

Approv'd His pleaded reason. 

Approved My pleaded reason. 

Since wide he wander'd on the wat'ry waste. 

Wandering that watery desert. 

Wander'd this barren waste. 

Where on the flow'ry herb as soft he lay. 

Soft on the flowery herb I found me laid. 

In thick shelter of innum'rous boughs. 

In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs. 

The cool translucent springs. 

The pure, translucent springs. 

Thames' translucent wave. 

Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave. 

Ever-during shade. 
Ever-during dark. 

(Of eyesight in each case 

Nor, till oblique he [Phoebus] slop'd his ev'ning ray 
Of I till the star that rose at evening bright 

.... had sloped his westering wheel. 

With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay. 
And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay. 

In shelter thick of horrid shade reclin'd. 
In thick shelter of black shades imbower'd. 
Dusk with horrid shades. 

Our groans the rocks remurmur'd to the main. 
Their moans The vales redoubled to the hills. 

As huge in length extended lay the beast. 

So stretch'd out huge in length the Arch-Fiend lay. 

Darkness cover'd o'er The face of things. 
[The moon] Shadowy sets of the face of things. 

No more was seen the human form divine. 
Not to me returns . . . or human face divine. 

This said, and scornful turning from the shore 

My haughty step, I stalk'd the valley o'er. 

So spoke the wretch; but shunning farther fray, 

Tum'd his proud step, and left them. 

So saying, his proud step he scornful tum'd. 

On his bloomy face 
Youth smil'd celestial, with each op'ning grace. 

In his face 
Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb 
Suitable grace difused. 

There seek the Theban Bard, depriv'd of sight; 

Within, irradiate with prophetic light. 

So much the rather thou, celestial Light, 

Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers 

Irradiate. [Of the blind Milton.] 



Odyssey, v. 224. 
P. L. i. 646. 

lb. v. 454-5. 
lb. vii. 307-8. 
P. L. via. 50^10. 

lb. v. 497. 
P. L. xi. yyg. 
P. R. i. 354- 
lb. v. 597. 
P. L. via. 254. 

lb. V. 606. 
Comus, J4Q. 

lb. vii. 231, X. 434. 
lb. xvii. 105. 
On his Grotto, i. 
Comus, 861. 

Odyssey, vii. 306. 
P. L. Hi. 45; c£. vii. 206. 
.) 
lb. vii. 372. 

Lycidas, 30-31. 

lb. ix. 32. 
P. L. iv. 311. 

lb. ix. 219. 
Comus, 62. 
P. R. i. 296. 

lb. X. 60. 

Piemont sonnet, S-g. 

lb. X. 206. 
P. L. i. 2og. 

lb. X. 210-11, xiv. 510-11. 
P. L. V. 43; cf. vii. 636. 

lb. X. 278. 

P. L. Hi. 41-4. 

lb. X. 325-6. 

lb. xvii. 304-5. 
P. L. iv. 536. 

lb. x. 331-2. 



P. L. Hi. 637-g. 
lb. X. 582-3. 

P. L. Hi. 51-3. 



PARALLELS — THOMSON 



583 



Behold the gloomy grot! whose cool recess. 
Umbrageous grots and caves Of cool recess. 

And tilting o'er the bay the vessels ride. 

Tilting on the tides 
Prepar'd to launch the freighted vessel rides. 
The floating vessel . . . Rode tilting o'er the waves. 

The osier-fringed bank. 

By the rushy-fringed bank, 

Where grows the willow and the osier dank. 

Her sloping hills the mantling vines adorn. 

Under a green mantling vine, 
That crawls along the side of yon small hill. 
O'er which the mantling vine . . . creeps Luxuriant. 

The bold emprize. 
And bold emprise. 

And all was riot, noise, and wild uproar. 
Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar. 

A voice of loud lament thro' all the main 
Was heard. 

The resounding shore, 
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament. 

Arise (or ye for ever fall) arise ! 
Awake, arise, or be for ever fall' n! 



lb. .xiii. 395. 
F. L. iv. 257-8. 

lb. xiv. 289. 

lb. XV. 507-8. 
P. L. xi. 745-7. 

lb. xiv. 533. 

Comus, 8go-Qi. 
lb. XV. 444. 

Comus, 294-5. 
P. L. iv. 258-60. 

lb. xxi. 308. 

P. L. xi. 642; Comus, 610. 

lb. xxi. 390. 

P. L. Hi. 710; cf. ii. 541. 

lb. xxiv. 67-8. 

Nativity, 182-^. 

lb. xxiv. 497. 
P. L. i. j30. 



THOMSON 1 

All involved in smoke. Spring, 1 29. 

Stench-involved. Autunm, 1206. 

And leave a singed bottom all involved 

With stench and smoke. P. L. i. 236-7. 

(Of earthquakes in the last two cases.) 

The nodding verdure of its brow. Spring, 229. 

The nodding horror of whose shady brows. Comus, 38. 

(Of woods in each case.) 

The first fresh dawn then waked the gladdened race 

Of uncorrupted man, nor blushed to see 

The sluggard sleep beneath its sacred beam; 

For their light slumbers gently fumed away. lb. 242-5. 

Now Morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime 

Advancing, sow'd the earth with orient pearl, 

When Adam waked, so custom'd; for his sleep 

Was aery light, from pure digestion bred. P. L.v. 1-4. 



» Most of these parallels were collected before Mr. G. C. Macaulay's life of Thomson appeared, and a 
number of them are not in his list (pp. 141-5). I am indebted to him, however, for six of those given above; 
and I think, as he does, that "the winter evening's occupations [Winter, 424-635] are partly suggested by 
Milton, those of the student, who holds ' high converse with the mighty dead' by // Penseroso, and those of 
the village and the city by L'Allegro" (p. 144), but it is hardly practicable to quote two hundred lines to 
prove it. I have taken nothing from Mr. J. E. Wells's article in Modern Language Notes, xxiv. 60-61, 
though perhaps I should have included "where cowslips hang The dewy head" {Spring, 448-g; cf. Lycidas, 
147). 



584 



APPENDIX A 



Fruits and blossoms blushed 
In social sweetness on the self-same bough. Spring, 321-2. 

Goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit, 
Blossoms and fruits at once of golden hue. P. L. iv. 147-8. 

Come with those downcast eyes, sedate and sweet, 

Those looks demure that deeply pierce the soul. lb. 485-6. 

Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure, 

Sober, stedfast, and demure . . . 

And looks commercing mth the skies. 

Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes . . . till 

With a sad leaden downward cast 

Thou fix them on the earth as fast. Penseroso, 31- 44. 

The winding vale its lavish stores, Irriguous, spreads. lb. 494-5. 
The irriguous vale. Autumn, 751. 

Some irriguous valley spread her store. P. L. iv. 255. 

The stately-sailing swan 
Gives out his snowy plumage to the gale. 
And, arching proud his neck, with oary feet 

Bears forward fierce. Spring, 778-81. 

The boat light-skimming stretched its oary wings. Autumn, 129. 

The swan, with arched neck 
Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows 
Her state with oary feet. P. L. vii. 438-40. 

Sportive lambs, 

This way and that convolved in f riskful glee. Spring, 836- 7. 

[Bees] Convolved and agonizing in the dust. Autumn, 1183. 

Satan . . . writhed him to and fro convolved. P. L. vi. 327-8. 

With woods o'erhung, and shagged with mossy rocks. Spring, 910. 

Scenes, 

Of horrid prospect, shag the tracldess plain. Winter, 280-81. 

By grots and caverns shagged with horrid shades. Comus, 42g. 

And villages embosomed soft in trees. Spring, 954. 

Ancient seats, with venerable oaks Embosomed high. Liberty, v. 52-3. 
Towers and battlements it sees 
Bosoni'd high in tufted trees. Allegro, 77-8. 



The rosy-bosomed Spring. 

Spring . . . and the rosy-bosom'd Hours. 

Beside the brink Of haunted stream. 

Did ever poet image aught so fair, 

Dreaming in whispering groves by the hoarse brook? 

Such sights as youthful poets dream 

On summer eves by haunted stream. 

The meek-eyed morn appears, mother of dews, 
At first faint-gleaming in the dappled east. 
Sent down the meek-eyed Peace. 
Till the dappled dawn doth rise. 



Spring, loio. 

Comus, g8j-6. 

Summer, 11- 12. 
Isaac Newton, 119-20. 
Allegro, 12Q-30. 



Summer, 47- 
Nativity, 46. 
Allegro, 44. 



PARALLELS — THOMSON 



58s 



Prime cheerer, Light! 
Of all material beings first and best! 
Efflux divine! Nature's resplendent robe, 
Without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt 
In unessential gloom; and thou, O Sun! ... in whom 
Shines out thy Maker! may I sing of thee? 
How shall I then attempt to sing of Him 
Who, Light Himself, in uncreated light 
Invested deep, dwells awfully retired. 
Hail, holy Light, of spring of Heaven first-born! 
Or of the Eternal coeternal beam 
May I express thee unblamed? since God is light, 
And never but hi unapproached light 
Dwelt from eternity, divelt then in thee, 
Bright effluettce of bright essence increate! 
Unessential Night. 

While, round thy beaming car, 
High-seen, the Seasons lead, in sprightly dance 
Harmonious knit, the rosy-fingered hours. 
[The moon] Leads on the gentle hours. 
Thy graces they, knit in harmonious dance. 
While universal Pan, 
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance, 
Led on the eternal Spring. 

The unfruitful rock itself, impregned by thee. 
When he [Jupiter] impregns the clouds. 



lb. 90-96. 



lb. 175-7. 



P.L. 
P.L. 



Hi. 1-6. 

a. 439. 



lb. 120-22. 
Spring, 1037. 
Liberty, v. 684. 



P. L. iv. 266-8. 

Summer, 140, 
P. L. iv. 500. 



Half in a blush of clustering roses lost. lb. 205. 

Half spied, so thick the roses bushing round. P. L. ix. 426. 

("Blushing" is the reading of the 1720 text.) 

On the mingling boughs they sit embowered. lb. 228. 

Oh! bear me then to vast embowering shades. Autumn, 1030. 

In thick shelter of black shades imbower'd. Comus, 62. 

The Etrurian shades High over-arch' d embower. P. L. i. J03- 4. 

The scenes where ancient bards . . . 

Conversed with angels and immortal forms. 

On gracious errands bent — to save the fall 

Of virtue struggling on the brink of vice. Summer, 523-7. 

(Perhaps suggested by the visit of Raphael to warn Adam and Eve: P. L., book v.) 

Here frequent, at the visionary hour, 

WTien musing midnight reigns or silent noon, 

Angelic harps are in full concert heard. 

And voices chaunting from the wood-crown'd hill, 

The deepening dale, or inmost sylvan glade. lb. 556-60. 

How often, from the steep 
Of echoing hill or thicket, have we heard 
Celestial voices to the midnight air . . . 
With heavenly touch of instrumental sounds 
In full harmonic number join'd. 



Where the bee . . . loads his little thigh. 
While the bee with honied thigh. 



P. L. iv. 680-87. 

lb. 626-8. 
Penseroso, 142. 



586 



APPENDIX A 



Or lead me through the maze, 
Embowering endless, of the Indian fig. Summer, 670-71 

(A reference to P. L. ix. iioi-iiio.) 

Through the soft silence of the listening night. 
Through the soft silence of the listening night. 



The sober-suited songstress. 
Civil-suited Morn. 

Cool to the middle air. 

Her wonted station in the middle air. 

As up the middle sky unseen they stole. 

Ruled the middle air. 

Up to the middle region of thick air. 

Thro' gorgeous Ind. 

Bring home of either Ind the gorgeous stores. 

The gorgeous east. 

Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, 

Or where the gorgeous East. 

In the farthest verge. 
Her farthest verge. 

The wonted roar is up. 
The wonted roar was up. 

The cheerful haunt of men. 
The cheerful haunt of men. 

Thence nitre, sulphur, and the fiery spume 

Of fat bitumen, steaming on the day . . . 

. . . till, by the touch ethereal roused . . . 

They furious spring. 

Deep under ground, materials dark and crude, 

Of spiritous and fiery spume, till touch'd 

With Heaven's ray, and tempered, they shoot forth 

. . . sulphurous and nitrous foam. 

With touch ethereal of Heaven's fiery rod. 

To close the face of things. 
Involve the face of things. 
Shadowy sets of the face of things. 

Till by degrees the finished fabric rose. 
To it adjoined a rising fabric stands. 
A fabric huge Rose like an exhalation. 

(Of a building in each case.) 
Frequent and full. 
Frequent and full. 

(Of an assembly in each case.) 

Even in the height of noon oppressed, the sun 
Sheds, weak and blunt, his wide-refracted ray; 
Whence glaring oft, with many a broadened orb, 
He frights the nations. 

As when the sun new-risen 
Looks through the horizontal misty air 
Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon, 
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds 
On half the nations, attd with fear of change 
Perplexes monarchs. 



lb. 745. 

Upon the Circumcision, 5. 

lb. 746. 
Penseroso, 122. 

lb. 768. 
lb. 1649. 
Autumn, 709. 
P. L. i. 516. 
P. R. a. 117. 

Summer, 825. 

Castle of Indolence, II. xx. 6. 

Liberty, v. 27. 

P. L. a. 2-3. 

Summer, 944. 
P. L. ii. ioj8. 

lb. 949. 
Comus, 549. 

lb. 1072. 
Comus, 388. 



lb. 1 108- 16. 



P. L. vi. 478-80, 512; cf . iv. 810-18. 
Samson, 549. 

lb. 1654. 

Winter, 57. 

P. L. V. 4j; cf . vii. 636, xi. 712. 

Autumn, 83; cf. Liberty, iv. 11 79, v. 376. 
Lines on Marlefield, 15. 
P. L. i. 710- II. 



Autumn, 531. 
P. L. i. 797. 



lb. 



721-4. 



P. L. i. 594-9. 



PARALLELS — THOMSON 



587 



From Asian Taurus, from Imaus stretched 

Athwart the roving Tartar's sullen bounds. lb. 783-4. 

As when a vulture on Imaus bred, 

Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds. P. L. Hi. 431-2. 

The congregated stores, 
The crystal treasures of the liquid world. lb. 823-4. 

Congregated clouds. Winter, 55. 

The great receptacle 
Of congregated waters he calVd seas. P. L. vii. 307-8. 

Infinite wings! till all the plume-dark air. Autumn, 869. 

The winged air dark'd with plumes. Comus, 730. 

(Of birds in each case.) 

With many a cool translucent brimming flood. lb. 888. 

Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave. Comus, 861. 

To tread low-thoughted vice beneath their feet. lb. 967. 

With low-thoughted care. Confined. Comus, 6-7. 

Oh! bear me then ... To twilight groves. lb. 1030-31. 

Me, Goddess, bring To arched walks of twilight groves. Penseroso, 132- 3. 

Meanwhile the moon . . . 
Turned to the sun direct, her spotted disk 
(Where mountains rise, umbrageous dales descend, 
And caverns deep, as optic tube descries). . . . 
Now through the passing cloud she seems to stoop. lb. 1088-96. 

The moon, whose orb 
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views . . . 
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands. 

Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe. P. L. i. 287-gi. 

And oft, as if her head she bow'd. 
Stooping through a fleecy cloud. [Of the moon.] Penseroso, 71-2. 

Armies in meet array. 
Thronged with aerial spears and steeds of fire; 
Till, the long lines of full-extended war 
In bleeding fight commixed, the sanguine flood 
Rolls a broad slaughter o'er the plains of heaven. lb. 1117- 21. 

As when, to warn proud cities, war appears 
Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush 
To battle in the clouds; before each van 
Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears, 
Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms 

From either end of Heaven the welkin burns. P. L. ii. 533-8. 

In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven. P. L. i. 104. 

(In the first two cases, of a battle in the clouds, which the people regard as a warning.) 



Hurled Sheer from the black foundation. 

Thrown by angry Jove 
Sheer o^er the crystal battlements. 

Welcome, kindred glooms! 
Cogenial horrors, hail! 
Hail, horrors! hail, Infernal world! 



lb. 1205-6. 
P. L. i. 741-2. 



Winter, 5-6. 
P. L. i. 250-1. 



588 



APPENDIX A 



The vivid Stars shine out, in radiant Files; 
And boundless Ether glows, till the fair Moon 
Shows her broad Visage, in the crimson'd East; 
Now, stooping, seems to kiss the passing Cloud: 
Now, o'er the pure Cerulean, rides sublime. 
Wide the pale Deluge floats, with silver Waves. 

Now glow'd the firmament 
With living sapphires; Hesperus, that led 
The starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon, 
Rising in clouded majesty, at length 
Apparent queen, unveU'd her peerless light. 
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw. 

Descends the ethereal force, and with strong gust 

Turns from its bottom the discoloured deep. 

The outrageous flood. 

They view'd the vast immeasurable Abyss, 

Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild. 

Up from the bottom turned by furious winds. 

And the thin Fabrick of the pillar'd Air. 

His fabric of the heavens. 

The pillar'd firmament is rottenness. 

Till Nature's King, who oft 
Amid tempestuous darkness dwells alone. 

How oft amidst 
Thick clouds and dark doth Heaven's all-ruling Sire 
Choose to reside. 

Then throng the busy shapes into his mind 
Of covered pits, unfathomably deep. 
A thousand shadows at her beck. 

A thousand fantasies 
Begin to throng into my memory. 
Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire. 

Meantime the village rouses up the fire; 
While, well attested, and as well believed, 
HeaW solemn, goes the goblin-story round. 
Till superstitious horror creeps o'er all. 
With stories told of many a feat . . . 
And he, by friar's lantern led, 
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat. . . . 
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep. 

Or beauteous freakt with many a mingled hue. 
The pansy freakt with jet. 

The loud misrule Of driving tempest. 
The loud misrule Of Chaos. 

Ill fares the bark, with trembling wretches chairged, 
That, tossed amid the floating fragments, moors 
Beneath the shelter of an icy isle. 
While night o'erwhelms the sea, and horror looks. 
The pilot of some small night-foimder'd skif 
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell . . . 
Moors by his side under the lee, while night 
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays. 



Winter (ist ed.), 88-93. 



P. L. iv. 604-9. 

Winter, 156-7. 
Spring, 1071. 

P. L. vii. 211-IJ. 

Winter (ist ed.), 162. 
P. L. viii. 76. 
Comus, 598. 

Winter, 197-8. 

P. L. a. 263-5. 

lb. 297-8. 
Summer, 1650. 

Comus, 205-7. 



Winter, 617-20. 



Allegro, 101-15. 

lb. 814. 
Lycidas, 144. 

lb. 896- 7. 

P. L. vii. 271-2. 



lb. 1004-7. 



P. L. i. 204-t 



PARALLELS — THOMSON 



589 



More to embroil the deep, Leviathan 
And his unwieldy train in dreadful sport 
Tempest the loosened brine. 

The broad monsters of the foaming deep 
.... flounce and tumble in unwieldy joy. 
Chaos . . . more embroils the fray. 
Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait, 
Tempest the ocean. There leviathan, 
Hugest of living creatures, on the deep 
Stretch'd like a promontory, sleeps or swims. 

On the whirlwind's wing Riding sublime. 
He on the wings of Cherub rode sublime. 



lb. 1014-16. 

Spring, 822-4. 
P. L. a. go7- 8. 



P. L. vii. 411- 14. 

Hymn, 18-19. 
P. L. vi. 771. 



(Of the Deity in each case.) 

As thick as idle motes in sunny ray. Castle of Indolence, I. xxix. 2. 

As thick and numberless 

As the gay motes that people the sunbeams. Penseroso, 7-8. 

(But cf. Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale, 12, "As thikke as motes in the sonne- 

beem.") 

When Dan Sol to slope his wheels began. 

Till the star . . . had sloped his westering wheel. 



His unpremeditated strain. 
My unpremeditated verse. 

With tottering step and slow. 

With wandering steps and slow. 

Bent on bold emprise. 

I love thy courage yet, and bold emprise. 

And tufted groves to shade the meadow-bed. 
A nd casts a gleam over this tufted grove. 

With magic dust their eyne he tries to blind. 

When once her eye 
Hath met the virtue of this magic dust. 

And o'er the nations shook her conquering dart. 
And over them triumphant Death his dart Shook. 

All that boon nature could luxuriant pour. 
Nature boon Pour'd forth profuse. 

Barbaric gold. 
Barbaric pearl and gold. 

Let Arabia breathe Her spicy gales. 

Winds . . . from the spicy shore 
Of Araby the Blest. 

In daring flight, above all modern wing. 
Above the flight of Pegasean wing. 

(Of the muse in each case.) 

Wings [of a goddess]. Dipped in the colours of the heavenly bow. lb. v. 549-50. 
Wings [of an angel] . . . with . . . colours dipt in heaven. P. L. v. 277-83. 

With her hand, 
Celestial red, she touched my darken'd eyes. [Of a goddess.] lb. v. 558-9. 
To whom the Angel, with a smile that glow'd 
Celestial rosy red. P. L. viii. 6i8-ig. 



lb. Iviii. 3. 
Lycidas, 30-31. 

lb. Ixviii. 4. 
P. L. ix. 24. 

lb. Ixxii. 5. 
P. L. xii. 648. 

lb. II. xiv. 2. 
Comus, 610. 

lb. xxxvii. 8. 

Comus, 225; cf . Allegro, 78. 

lb. xli. 7. 

Comus, 164--5. 

lb. 1. 7. 

P. L. xi. 491-2; cf. ii. 672. 

Liberty, ii. 98. 
P. L. iv. 242-3. 

lb. ii. 444. 
P. L. ii. 4. 

lb. V. 19-20. 

P. L. iv. 161-3. 

lb. V. 437, 
P. L. vii. 4. 



590 



APPENDIX A 



Now wrapt in some mysterious dream. 
Atid let some strange mysterious dream. 

Thine is the balmy breath of morn. 
Sweet is the breath of Morn. 

When meditation has her fill. 
To meditate my rural minstrelsy, 
Till fancy had her fill. 

Till, to the forehead of our evening sky 
Returned, the blazing wonder glares anew. 

And with new-spangled ore 
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky. 

(Of the disappearance and return of a 

The nibbling flock stray. 

Where the nibbling flocks do stray. 

The morning springs, in thousand liveries drest. 

The clouds in thousand liveries dight. 

Flowers of all hue, their queen the bashful rose. 
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose. 



Solitude, II. 
Penseroso, 147. 

lb. 25. 

P. L. iv. 641. 

lb. 44. 
Comus, 547-8. 

Isaac Newton, 79- 80. 

Lycidas, 170-71. 
heavenly body in each case.) 

On Beauty, 13. 
Allegro, 72. 

Morning in the Country, 2. 
Allegro, 62. 

Lines on Marlefield, 22. 
P. L. iv. 2j6, 



YOUNG 1 

But chiefly thou, great Ruler! Lord of all! 
Before whose throne archangels prostrate fall; 
If at thy nod, from discord, and from night. 
Sprang beauty, and yon sparkling worlds of light, 
Exalt e'en me; all inward tumults quell; 
The clouds and darkness of my mind dispel; 
To my great subject thou my breast inspire, 
And raise my lab'ring soul with equal fire. 
And chiefly thou, Spirit . . . what in me is dark 
Illumine, what is low raise and support; 
That to the highth of this great argument 
I may assert Eternal Providence. . . . 
In the beginning how the Heavens and Earth 
Rose out of Chaos. 

And death might shake his threat'ning lance in vain. 
[Death] shook a dreadful dart. 

And the grand rebel flaming downward hurl'd. 

Him [Satan] the Almighty Power 
Hurl'd headlong flaming from the ethereal sky. 

Less glorious, when of old th' eternal Son 
From realms of night return'd with trophies won: 
Thro' heaven's high gates, when he triumphant rode, 
And shouting angels hail'd the victor God. lb. iii (ii. 

(A reference to P. L. vi. 880-90.) 



Last Day, i (ii. 2). 



P. L. i. 17-25, 9-10. 

lb. i (ii. 5). 

P. L. ii. 672; cf. xi. 491-2. 

lb. ii (ii. 18). 
P. L. i. 44-5. 



27). 



» Several of these parallels are pointed out in W. Thomas's Le Poele Edward Young (Paris, igoi) , but I 
have not included ail that M. Thomas notes. The figures in parentheses refer to the volume and page of 
the Aldine edition of Young (1832). 



PARALLELS — YOUNG 59 1 

Down an abyss how dark, and how profound? 

Down, down, (I still am falling, horrid pain!) 

Ten thousand thousand fathoms still remain. lb. iii (ii. 29). 

Then, from the crystal battlements of heaven, 

Down, down, she hurls it thro' the dark profound, 

Ten thousand thousand fathom. Night Thoughts, ix (i. 235). 

Thrown by angry Jove 
Sheer o'er the crystal battlements. P. L. i. 741-2. 

Plumb down he drops 
Ten thousand fathom deep [in Chaos, an abyss dark and profound]. P. L. ii. 93J~4. 

The favour'd of their Judge, in triumph move 

To take possession of their thrones above; 

Satan's accurs'd desertion to supply, 

And fill the vacant stations of the sky. Last Day, iii (ii. 31). 

(This is the reason given for the creation of man in P. L. iii. 677-9 ^^d vii. 

150-61.) 

A lamp . . . sheds a quiv'ring melancholy gloom, 

Which only shows the darkness of the room. Force of Religion, ii (ii. 47). 

Yet from those flames 
No light, but rather darkness visible. P. L. i. 62-j. 

And glory, at one entrance, quite shut out. Love of Fame, ii (ii. 76). 

And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. P. L. iii. 50. 

(Pointed out by Young.) 

Till some god whispers in his tingling ear. 

That fame's unwholesome taken without meat. lb. iv (ii. 92). 

Phoebus replied, and touch'd my trembling ears: 

"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil." Lycidas, 77-8. 

Naked in nothing should a woman be . . . 

But yield her charms of mind with sweet delay. lb. vi (ii. 117). 

Yielded with coy submission, modest pride. 

And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay. P. L. iv. jio-ii. 

Thus the majestic mother of mankind , 
To her own charms most amiably blind. 
On the green margin innocently stood, 
And gaz'd indulgent on the crystal flood; 
Survey'd the stranger in the painted wave. 

And, smiling, prais'd the beauties which she gave. lb. vi (ii. 132-3). 

Like Milton's Eve, when gazing on the lake, 

Man makes the matchless image, man admires. Night Thoughts, vi (i. 124). 

(Young refers in each case to Milton: cf . P. L. iv. 456-69.) 

Intestine broils. Night Thoughts, i (i. 8). 

Intestine broils. P. L. ii. looi. 

Rocks, desarts, frozen seas, and burning sands: 

Wild haunts of monsters, poisons, stings, and death. lb. i (i. 10). 

Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death . . . 

Where all life dies, death lives, and N attire breeds, 

Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things. P. L. ii. 621-^. 

High-flusht, with insolence and wine. lb. ii (i. 27). 

Floivn with insolence and wine. P. L. i. 502. 

(Of a night orgy in each case.) 



592 



APPENDIX A 



The wilderness of joy. 
A wilderness of joys. 
A wilderness of wonder. 
A wilderness of sweets. 

That husht Cimmerian vale, 
Where darkness, brooding o'er unfinisht fates, 
With raven wing incumbent, waits the day. 
Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, 
And the night-raven sings . . . 
In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. 

Where am I rapt by this triumphant theme, 

On Christian joy's exulting wing, above 

Th' Aonian mount! 

But oh! I faint! my spirits fail! — Nor strange! 

So long on wing, and in no middle clime! 

My adventurous song, 
That with no middle flight intends to soar 
Above the Aonian mount. 

Pavilion'd high he sits 
In darkness from excessive splendour born. 
By gods unseen, unless thro' lustre lost. 
Throned inaccessible, but when thou shadest 
The full blaze of thy beams, and . . . 
Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear. 
Yet dazzle Heaven, that brightest Seraphim 
Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes. 

(Of Gk)d in each case.) 

As when a wretch, from thick, polluted air. 
Darkness, and stench, and suffocating damps. 
And dungeon-horrors, by kind fate, discharg'd 
Climbs some fair eminence, where ether pure 
Surrounds him, and Elysian prospects rise. 
His heart exults, his spirits cast their load. 
As one who, long in populous city pent. 
Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air. 
Forth issuing on a summer^s morn to breathe 
Among the pleasant villages and farms 
Adjoin' d, from each thing met conceives delight. 

Whence descends 
Urania, my celestial guest! who deigns 
Nightly to visit me, so mean. 
Descend from Heaven, Urania. 
Of my celestial patroness, who deigns 
Her nightly visitation unimplored. 

Smit with the pomp of lofty sentiments. 
Smit with the love of sacred song. 

Fall, how profound! like Lucifer's, the fall! . . . 

.... hurl'd headlong, hurl'd at once 

To night! to nothing! 



Night Thoughts, iii (i. 36). 
lb. viii (i. 187). 
lb. ix (i. 276). 
P. L. V. 2g4. 



lb. iii (i. 43-4). 
Allegro, 6-10. 

lb. iv (i. 61). 
lb. ix (i. 290). 

P. L. i. 13-15- 
lb. iv (i. 64). 

P. L. iii. 377-82. 



lb. iv (i. 69). 



P. L. ix. 445-9; cf . Hi. 543-53' 



lb. v (i. 84). 
P. L. vii. I. 

P. L. ix. 21-2. 

lb. vii (i. iss). 
P. L. iii. 2g. 



[God] o'er heaven's battlements the felon [Lucifer] hurl'd 



lb. vii (i, 157). 



To groans, and chains, and darkness. 



lb. ix (i. 279). 



PARALLELS — YOUNG 593 

Him [Satan] the Almighty Power 
Hurl'd headlong flaming from the ethereal sky . . . 
To bottomless perdition; there to dwell 
In adamantine chains and penal fire. P. L. i. 44-8. 

Thrown by angry Jove 
Sheer o'er the crystal battlements. P. L. i. 741-2. 

And vindicate th' economy of heaven. lb. vii (i. 164). 

And justify the ways of God to men. P. L. i. 26. 

Universal blank. lb. vii (i. 166). 

A universal blank. P. L. Hi. 48. 

'Midst upper, nether, and surrounding night. lb. vii (i, 166). 

'Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires. P. L. i. 346. 

Witness, ye flames! th' Assyrian tyrant blew 

To sevenfold rage. lb. vii (i. 171). 

What if the breath that kindled those grim fires, 

Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold rage. 

And plunge us in the flames? P. L. it. 170-72. 

A Christian dwells, like Uriel, in the sun. lb. vii (i. 178). 

(Young refers to Milton: cf. P. L. iii. 622-53.) 

In ambient air. lb. viii (i. 186). 

The ambient air. P. L. vii. 8g. 

Sudden as the spark 
From smitten steel; from nitrous grain, the blaze. lb. is (i. 231). 

As when a spark 
Lights on a heap of nitrous powder . . . 
. ... the smutty grain. 
With sudden blaze diffused, inflames the air. P. L. iv. 814-18. 

Sulphurous and nitrous foam 
They found . . . and . . . reduced To blackest grain. P. L. vi. 512-15. 

(Of gunpowder in each case.) 

The foe of God and man . . . 
And rears his brazen front, with thunder scarr'd. . . . 
Like meteors in a stormy sky, how roll 

His baleful eyes ! lb. ix (i. 233) . 

Above them all the Archangel; but his face 

Deep scars of thunder had intrenched. P. L. i. 600-601. 

Round he throws his baleful eyes. P. L. i. 56. 

So, Cynthia (poets feign) 
In shadows veil'd, soft sUding from her sphere. lb. ix (i. 241). 

Peace . . . came softly sliding 
Down through the turning sphere. Nalivity, 46-8. 

Sweet interchange of rays. lb. ix (i. 246). 

Sweet interchange Of hill and valley. P. L. ix. 115-16. 

O what a confluence of ethereal fires, 

From urns unnumber'd! lb. ix (i. 247). 

Hither, as to their fountain, other stars 

Repairing, in their golden urns draw light. P. L. vii. 364-5. 

(Of stars in each case.) 



594 



APPENDIX A 



[Angels] of various plume, 
In heavenly liveries, distinctly clad. 
Azure, green, purple, pearl, or downy gold, 
Or all commix'd; they stand, with wings outspread, 
List'ning. 

[An angel's wings of] downy gold 
And colours dipt in heaven. 

Those waved their limber fans 
For wings, and smallest lineaments exact 
In all the liveries deck'd of summer's pride. 
With spots of gold and purple, azure and green. 

The breastplate of the true High priest, 
Ardent with gems oracular. 
Urim and Thummim, those oractdous gems 
On Aaron's breast. 

Their dance perplex'd exhibits to the sight . . . 
The circles intricate, and mystic maze. 
Mystical dance, which yonder starry sphere . . . 
Resembles nearest, mazes intricate. 

(Of the stars in each case. 

What more than Atlantean shoulder props. 
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear. 

What magic . . . these pond'rous orbs sustains? 
Who would not think them hung in golden chains? 
And hangs creation, like a precious gem. 
Though little, on the footstool of his throne! 
And fast by [heaven], hanging in a golden chain. 
This pendent world, in bigness as a star. 

Or has th' Almighty Father, with a breath, 
Impregnated the womb of distant space? 
Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast Abyss, 
And madest it pregnant. 

Chaos! of nature both the womb, and grave! 

This wild A byss [Chaos] , 
The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave. 

His purple wing bedropp'd with eyes of gold. 
Their waved coats dropt with gold. 
And waves his purple wings. 

By second chaos; and eternal night. 
/ sung of Chaos and eternal Night. 

Of matter multiform; or dense, or rare; 

Opaque, or lucid; rapid, or at rest. 

O'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare. 

Where thou, from all eternity, hast dwelt. 
Dwelt from eternity. 

(Of God in each case.) 



Night Thoughts, ix (i. 251). 
P. L.v. 282-3. 

P. L. vii. 476-g. 

lb. ix (i. 256). 
P. R. Hi. 14-15. 

lb. ix (i. 259). 

P. L. V. 620-22. 

) 

lb. ix (i. 259). 
P. L. ii. 306. 

lb. ix (i. 259). • 
lb. ix (i. 270). 
P. L. ii. 1051-2. 

lb. ix (i. 271). 

P. L. i. 21-2. 

lb. ix (i. 271). 

P. L. ii. Qio-ii. 

lb. ix (i. 284). 
P. L. vii. 406. 
P. L. iv. 764. 

lb. ix (i. 289). 
P. L. Hi. 18. 



lb. ix (i. 291). 
P. L. ii. 948. 

lb. ix (i. 293). 
P. L. Hi. 5. 



PARALLELS — WARTON 



595 



THOMAS WARTON 1 



When chants the milk-maid at her balmy pail, 
And weary reapers whistle o'er the vale. 

While the plotighman, near at hand, 
Whistles o'er the furrow'd land, 
And the milkmaid singeth blithe. 

O'er Isis' willow-fringed banks I stray'd. 

By the rushy -fringed bank, 

Where grows the willow and the osier dank. 

I fram'd the Doric lay. 

O for the warblings of the Doric ote , 

That wept the youth deep-whelm'd in ocean's tide ! 

And he, sweet master of the Doric oat. 

But now my oat proceeds. . . . 

With eager thought warbling his Doric lay. 

From her loose hair the dropping dew she press'd. 

The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair. 

No more thy love-resounding sonnets suit 
To notes of pastoral pipe, or oaten flute. 

Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute, 
Tempered to the oaten flute. 

My Muse divine still keeps her wonted state, 
The mien erect, and high majestic gait. 
That Albion still shall keep her wonted state. 
Come, but keep thy wonted state. 
With even step, and musing gait. 

To hold short dalliance with the tuneful Nine. 

With her, as years successive glide, 

I'll hold divinest dalliance. 

Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse. 

Ye cloisters pale. 

The studious cloisters pale. 

I see the sable-suited Prince advance. 

Till civil-suited Morn appear. 

Sat sable-vested Night. 

The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipped ark. 

She rests her weary feet, and plumes her wings. 

Her painted wings Imagination plumes. 

She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings. 

To drop the sweeping pall of scepter'd pride. 
To throw the scepter'd pall of state aside. 
In sceptred pall come sweeping by. 

With even step he walk'd, and constant hand. 
With even step, and musing gait. 



Triumph of Isis, 3-4. 

Allegro, 63-5. 
lb. 6. 

Comus, 8 go- 1. 
lb. 8. 

Elegy on Prince of Wales, 1-2. 
King's Birthday, 1786, 27. 

Lycidas, 88, i8g. 

Triumph of Isis, 17. 
Comus, 863. 

lb. 21-2. 
Lycidas, 32-3. 

lb. 75-6 (original form). 
New Year 1786, 90. 

Penseroso, 37-8. 
Triumph of Isis, 98. 

Approach of Summer, 336-7. 
P. L. ix. 443. 

Triumph of Isis, 153. 
Penseroso, 156. 

lb. 205. 
Penseroso, 122. 
P. L. ii. g62. 
Nativity, 220. 

lb. 240. 

Sent to Mr. Upton, 26. 

Comus, 378. 

Elegy on Prince of Wales, 14. 
Marriage of King, 72. 
Penseroso, g8. 

Elegy on Prince of Wales, 21. 
Penseroso, 38. 



> Most of these parallels, as well as many others that I have not included, are pointed out by Richard 
Mant in his edition of Warton's poems (Oxford, 1803). 



596 



APPENDIX A 



Marriage of King, 45-6. 



Penseroso, 116-18. 

lb. 66. 

Grave of Arthur, 131. 

Allegro, 37. 

Marriage of King, 70. 
P. L. ix. 452. 

Birth of Prince of Wales, 50. 
Vale-Royal Abbey, 16. 

Penseroso, i^q-6o. 



Flam'd in the van of many a baron bold. Death of George II, 54. 

To mark the mouldering halls of barons bold. Reynolds's Window, 13. 

Whence Hardyknute, a baron bold. Approach of Summer, 243. 

Where throngs of knights and barons bold. Allegro, iig. 

(But cf. Gray's Bard, 11 1, "Girt with many a Baron bold.") 

While cunning Bards at ancient banquets sung 
Of paynim foes defied, and trophies hung. 
A nd if aught else great bards beside 
In sage and solemn tunes have sung, 
Of turneys, and of trophies hung. 

Entwine thy diadem with honour due. 
The faded tomb, with honour due. 
If I give thee honour due. 

To tread with nymph-like step the conscious plain 
// chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass. 

Stream through the storied window's holy hue. 
With rich reflection of the storied glass. 
And storied windows richly dight, 
Casting a dim religious light. 

(In each of these passages a colored glass window in a church is meant. 
War ton also speaks of "the storied tapestry," Grave of Arthur, 15; and 
"the stately-storied hall," Sonnet, Wilton-House, 10. The Epistle from 
Hearn, which was probably written by Joseph Warton, has "saints in 
storied windows.") 

When stands th' embattled host in banner'd pride. 

A bannered host. 

That led the embattled Seraphim to war. 

O'er deep embattled ears of corn. 

Up stood the corny reed Embattled. 

(Warton also has "th' embattled sedge," Monody, 3; "embattled clouds," 
Pleasures of Melancholy, 294; "brows, imbattled high," King's Birth- 
day 1790, 59.) 

The tread majestic, and the beaming eye, 
That lifted speaks its commerce with the sky. 
With even step, and musing gait, 
And looks commercing with the skies. 

There oft thou listen'st to the wild uproar. 

Hell scarce holds the wild uproar. 

To ruin'd seats, to twilight cells and bow'rs. 
Where thoughtful Melancholy loves to muse. 
That musing Meditation most affects 
The pensive secrecy of desert cell. 

Pours her long-levell'd rule of streaming light. 

With the level-streaming rays. 

With thy long levelVd rule of streaming light. 

Then, when the sullen shades of ev'ning close. 

Where thro' the room a blindly-glimm'ring gleam 

The dying embers scatter, far remote 

From Mirth's mad shouts, that thro' th' illumin'd roof 

Resound with festive echo, let me sit, 

Blest with the lowly cricket's drowsy dirge. Pleasures of Melancholy, 74-9. 



Birth of Prince of Wales, 54. 

P. L. a. SS5. 

p. L. i. i2g; cf . vi. 16, etc. 

Approach of Summer, 114. 
P. L. vii. 321-2. 



Reynolds's Window, 57-8. 

Penseroso, 38-g. 

Pleasures of Melancholy, 13. 



P. L. a. 541. 



lb. 19-20. 



Comus, 386-7. 

lb. 31. 

Approach of Summer, 121. 

Comus, 340. 



PARALLELS — WARTON 



597 



Where glowing embers through the room 

Teach light to counterfeit a gloom. 

Far from all resort of mirth, 

Save the cricket on the hearth. Fenseroso, y^82. 

That like the dazzling spells 
Of wily Comus cheat th' unweeting eye 
With blear illusion, and persuade to drink 
That charmed cup, which Reason's mintage fair 
Unmoulds, and stamps the monster on the man. lb. 85-9. 

Thus I hurl 
My dazzling spells into the spongy air, 
Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion. , . . 
By sly enticement gives his baneful cup. 
With many murmurs mix'd, whose pleasing poison 
The visage quite transforms of him that drinks. 
And the inglorious likeness of a beast 
Fixes instead, unmoulding reason's mintage. 

The blest regent of the golden day. 
Regent of day. 

(Of the sun in each case.) 

Yet not ungrateful is the morn's approach, 

When dropping wet she comes, and clad in clouds. 

Till civil-suited Morn appear, 

Not tricked and frounced, as she was wont . . . 

But kerchieft in a comely cloud . . . 

Or usher'd with a shower still. 

Rings not the high wood with enliven'd shouts 
Of early hunter. 

Oft listening how the hounds and horn 
Cheerly rouse the slumbering Morn . . . 
Through the high wood echoing shrill. 

By frolic Zephyr's hand. 

The frolic wind that breathes the spring. Zephyr. 

The taper'd choir, at the late hour of pray'r, 

Oft let me tread, while to th' according voice 

The many-sounding organ peals on high, 

The clear slow-dittied chaunt, or varied hymn, 

Till all my soul is bath'd in ecstasies, 

And lapp'd in Paradise. lb. 196-201. 

There let the pealing organ blow 

To the full-voiced choir below. 

In service high and anthems clear, 

As may with sweetness, through mine ear. 

Dissolve me into ecstasies. 

And bring all Heaven before mine eyes. 



Comus, 153-5, 525-9- 

lb. 108. 

P. L. vii. yji. 



lb. 135-6. 

Fenseroso, 122-y. 
lb. 150-51. 

Allegro, 53-6. 

lb. 190. 
Allegro, i8-jg. 



The due clock swinging slow with sweepy sway. 

But when the curfeu's measur'd roar 

Duly, the darkening valleys o'er. 

Has echoed from the distant town. 

Oft, on a plat of rising ground, 

I hear the far-off curfew sound. 

Over some wide-water'd shore 

Swinging slow with stdlen roar. 



Fenseroso, 161-6. 
lb. 209. 

The Hamlet, 27-9. 
Fenseroso, 73-6. 



598 



APPENDIX A 



Here palmy groves . . . here vine-clad hills 

Lay forth their purple store. 

Or palmy hillock; or the flowery lap 

Of some irrigtious valley spread her store. . . . 

Lays forth her purple grape. 

Tho' thro* the blissful scenes Hissus roll 
His sage-inspiring flood. 

There Ilisstis rolls 
His whispering stream. Within the walls tlien view 
The schools of ancient sages. 

(Of Athens in each case.) 

But never let Euphrosyne beguile 

With toys of wanton mirth my fixed mind. 

In Heaven yclep'd Euphrosyne. 

Hoiv little you bested, 

Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys! 

And Bacchus, ivy-crown'd. 
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore. 

Yet are these joys that Melancholy gives. 
These pleasures, Melancholy, give. 

Of parting wings bedropt with gold. 
Their waved coats dropt with gold. 



Pleasures of Melancholy, 248-52. 



P. L. iv. 254-g. 



lb. 255-6. 



P. R. iv. 249-51. 



lb. 285-6. 
Allegro, 12. 

Penseroso, 3-4. 

lb. 291. 
Allegro, 16. 

lb. 297. 
Penseroso, 175. 

Inscription in a Hermitage, 32. 
P. L. vii. 406. 



(But cf. Pope's Windsor Forest, 144, "The yellow carp, in scales be- 
dropped with gold.") 



To take my staff, and amice gray. 

Came forth with pilgrim steps, in amice gray. 

Death stands prepar'd, but still delays, to strike. 
And over them triumphant Death his dart 
Shook, but delay' d to strike. 

From the trim garden's thymy mound. 
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure. 

Massy proof. Vale-Royal Abbey, 64 (of a column); New Year 1786, 60 (of a bastion); 
New Year 1788, i (of a castle). 

With antic pillars massy proof. Penseroso, 158. 

(Warton also has "massy piles," Triumph of Isis, 151; "massy state," 
Birth of Prince of Wales, 28; "massy pride," Reynolds's Window, 19; 
"massy cups" and "massy blade," Grave of Arthur, 11, 173; "massy 
pomp," King's Birthday 1788,51; "massy maze," Sonnet, Stonehenge, 7.) 



lb. 38. 

P. R. iv. 42y. 

To Sleep, 16. 

P. L. xi. 491-2. 

The Hamlet, 45 (original reading). 
Penseroso, 50. 



Yet partial as she sings. 
Their song was partial. 

Then was loneliness to me 

Best and true society. 

For\solitude sometimes is best society. 

Saw Cupid's stately maske come sweeping by. 
Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy 
In sceptred pall come sweeping by. 

Lost in some melancholy fit. 
Wrapt in a pleasing fit of melancholy. 



Vale-Roya) Abbey, 77. 

P. L. a. 552. 

Solitude at an Inn, 5-6. 
P. L. ix. 249. 

Sent to Mr. Upton, 20. 

Penseroso, 97-8. 

Sent to a Friend, 26. 

Comus, 546. 



PARALLELS — WARTON 



599 



Where high o'er-arching trees embower. lb. 34. 

Above th' embowering shade. Monody, 10. 

Where the Etrurian shades 

High over-arched embower. P. L. i. 303-4; cf . ix. 1038, Camus, 62. 

(Warton also has "in embow'ring woods" and "cave embower'd with 
mournful yew," Pleasures of Melancholy, 175, 281; " embowering elms," 
Inscription in a Hermitage, 4; "the hanging oak . . . Waves his imbower- 
ing head," Horace, IH. xiii. 18-20; "the curling woodbine's shade im- 
bow'rs," The Hamlet, 44; "with myrtle bower'd and jessamine" and 
" f rom bowering beech," Approach of Summer, 52, 169.) 

In every rural sight or sound. Sent to a Friend, 44. 

Each rural sight, each rural sound. P. L. ix. 451. 

From the deep dell, where shaggy roots 

Fringe the rough brink with wreathed shoots, 

Th' unwilling Genius flies forlorn. 

His primrose chaplet rudely torn. 

With hollow shriek the N)Tnphs forsake 

The pathless copse and hedge-row brake. lb. 53-8. 

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. . . . 

From haunted spring, and dale 

Edged with poplar pale. 

The parting Genius is with sighing sent; 

With flower-inwoven tresses torn 

The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn. 



The violet's unprinted head. 
Thus I set my printless feet 
O'er the cowslip's velvet head. 

Fair forms, in every wondrous wood, 
Or lightly tripp'd, or solemn stood. 
Under the trees now tripp'd, now solemn stood, 
Nymphs of Diana's train, and Naiades. 

While gleaming o'er the crisped bowers. 

Along the crisped shades and bowers. 

The pine cerulean, never sere. 

Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere. 

A thousand tumbling rills inlay 

With silver veins the vale, or pass 

Redundant through the sparkling grass. 

From a thousand petty rills. 

That tumble down the snowy hills. 

Isles . . . inlay . . . the deep. 

Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass 

Floated redundant. [Of a serpent.] 

Dim-figur'd on whose robe are shown. 
His mantle hairy and his bonnet sedge. 
Inwrought with figures dim. 

Thee April blithe, as long of yore. 
Thee bright-hair' d Vesta long of yore. 

With muskie nectar-trickling wing. 
And west winds with musky wing. 



Nativity, 178-88. 
lb. 68. 

Comus, 8gy-8. 

lb. 81-2. 

P. R. a. 354-5. 

lb. 85. 
Comus, 984. 

First of April, 66. 
Lycidas, 2. 



lb. 92-4. 

Comus, g26-j. 
Comus, 21-3. 

P. L. ix. 502-3. 
Approach of Summer, 17. 

Lycidas, 104-5. 

lb. 31. 
Penseroso, 23. 

lb. 33. 

Comus, 989. 



6oo 



APPENDIX A 



Where a tall citron's shade imbrown'd 
The soft lap of the fragrant ground. 

Where the unpierced shade 
Imbrown'd the noon-tide bowers. 

You bloom'd a goddess debonnair. 

Thou Goddess . . . So buxom, blithe, and debonair. 

Haste thee, nymph! and hand in hand, 
With thee lead. 

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee. 

Bring fantastic-footed Joy. 
On the light fantastic toe. 

His wattled cotes the shepherd plants. 

The folded flocks, penn'd in their wattled cotes. 

Nor mastiff's bark from bosom'd cot. 
Bosom' d high in tufted trees. 

(In each case, of a dwelling half hidden by trees.) 

The ruby chambers of the West. lb. ii8. 

His chamber in the east. Comus, loi. 

(In connection with the sun in each case.) 

Bathes my blithe heart in ecstasies. lb. 126. 

Dissolve me into ecstasies. Penseroso, 165. 

Till Melancholy has her fill. lb. 136. 

Wrapt in a pleasing fit of melancholy . . . 

Till fancy had her fill. Comus, §46-8. 

(Of an evening reverie in the woods in each case.) 

But when the Sun, at noon-tide hour, 

Sits throned in his highest tow'r. 

Sometimes towards Heaven and the full-blazing sun, 

Which now sat high in his meridian tower. 



Approach of Summer, 43-4. 

P. L. iv. 245-6. 

lb. 48. 
Allegro, II, 24. 

lb. 57-8. 
Allegro, 25. 

lb. 59- 

Allegro, 24- 

lb. 99. 

Comus, 244. 

lb. 112. 

Allegro, 78. 



To the tann'd haycock in the mead. 
To the tann'd haycock in the mead. 

From bowering beech the mower blithe 
With new-born vigour grasps the scythe. 
And the milkmuid singeth blithe, 
And the mower whets his sithe. 



lb. 139-40. 

P. L. iv. 2g-30. 

lb. 142. 
Allegro, go. 

lb. 169-70. 

Allegro, 65-6. 

lb. 173- 
Allegro, 135. 

lb. 176. 
Allegro, 8. 



But ever against restless heat. 
And ever, against eating cares. 

Hangs nodding from the low-brow'd rock. 
Under ebon shades and low-brow'd rocks. 

(But cf. Pope's Eloisa to Abelard, 244, "Low-browed rocks hang nodding 

o'er the deeps.") 

A rustic, wild, grotesque alcove. 

Its side with mantling woodbines wove; 

Cool as the cave where Clio dwells. lb. 181-3. 

Whose hairy sides 
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild. ... 

caves 

Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine. P. L. iv. 135-6, 25J-8. 

A bank . . . interwove With . . . honeysuckle. Comus, 543-5. 



PARALLELS — WARTON 



60 1 



On that hoar hill's aerial height. 
From the side of some hoar hill. 

What open force, or secret guile. 
Whether oj open war or covert guile. 

Let not my due feet fail to climb. 
Let my due feet never fail To walk. 

beauteous, rural interchange! 
The simple spire, and elmy grange! 

Sweet interchange 
Of hill and valley, rivers, woods, and plains. 

Canst bid me carol wood-notes wild. 
Warble his native wood-notes wild. 

With thee conversing, all the day. 
With thee conversing I forget all time. 

1 meditate my lightsome lay. 
To meditate my rural minstrelsy. 

And strictly meditate the thankless Muse. 

In valleys, where mild whispers use. 

Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use. 

For ever held in holy trance. 
There held in holy passion still. 

Thy brazen drums hoarse discord bray. 

Arms on armour clashing bray'd Horrible discord. 

And, rolling in terrific state, 

On giant- wheels harsh thunders grate. 

And on their hinges grate Harsh thunder. 

Never yet in rime enroU'd , 
Nor sung nor harp'd in hall or bower. 
What never yet was heard in tale or song. 
From old or modern bard, in hall or bower. 

A minstrel, sprung of Cornish line. 
Who spoke of kings from old Locrine. 
Virgin, daughter of Locrine, 
Sprung of old Anchises' line. 

The stoled fathers met the bier. 

The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipped ark. 

He scorns awhile his bold emprise. 
/ love thy courage yet, and bold emprise. 
Giants of mighty bone and bold emprise. 

(But cf. Faerie Queene, II. iii. 35, "Renowmd 

In vain to build the lofty rhjone. 
Could build the genuine rime. 
And build the lofty rhyme. 

Hence he told 
The banquet of Cambuscan bold. 

Left half told 
Th« story of Cambuscan bold. 



lb. 238. 
Allegro, 55. 

lb. 253. 
P. L. ii. 41. 

lb. 257. 
Penseroso, 155-6. 

lb. 267-8. 

P. L. ix. 115-16. 

lb. 274. 
Allegro, 134. 

lb. 283. 

P. L. iv. 63g. 

lb. 284. 
Comus, 547. 
Lycidas, 66. 

lb. 287. 
Lycidas, 136. 

lb. 338. 
Penseroso, 41. 

The Crusade, 24. 
P. L. vi. 20Q-10. 

lb. 71-2. 

P. L. ii. 881-2. 



Grave of Arthur, 96-7. 

Comus, 44-5. 

lb. 99-100. 

Comus, 922-3. 

lb. 120. 
Nativity, 220. 

lb. 164. 
Comus, 610. 
P. L. xi. 642. 
through many bold emprize.") 

Ode for Music, 136. 
The Suicide, 39. 
Lycidas, 11. 

King's Birthday 1787, 9-10. 
Penseroso, 109-10. 



6o2 



APPENDIX A 



Here held his pomp, and trail'd the pall 
Of triumph through the trophied hall; 
And War was clad awhile in gorgeous weeds; 
Amid the martial pageantries, 
While Beauty's glance adjudg'd the prize, 
And beam'd sweet influence on heroic deeds. 
Where throngs of knights and barons bold, 
In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold. 
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes 
Rain influence, and judge the prize. . . . 
And pomp, and feast, and revelry. 
With masque and antique pageantry. 
Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy 
In sceptred pall come sweeping by. 

That, fraught with drops of precious cure. 
Drops that from my fountain pure 
I have kept of precious cure. 

He rolls his eyes, that witness huge dismay. 

Round he throws his baleful eyes. 
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay. 

Smit with the love of the laconic boot. 
Smit with the love of sacred song. 

Where no crude surfeit, or intemperate joys 
Of lawless Bacchus reign. 
Where no crude surfeit reigns. 

Of monumental oak. 

Of pine, or monumental oak. 

Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles, 

That love to live within the one-curl'd Scratch, 

With fun, and all the family of smiles. 

Quips, and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, 

Nods and Becks, and wreathed Smiles . . . 

And love to live in dimple sleek. 

Diction 



New Year 1788, 39-44. 



Allegro, 119-28, 

Penseroso, 97-8. 

King's Birthday 1790, 21. 

Comus, 912-13. 
Newmarket, 94. 

P. L. i. 56-7. 

lb. 107. 

P. L. Hi. 29. 

Oxford Ale, 9-10. 
Comus, 479. 

lb. 30. 

Penseroso, ijS- 

Grizzle Wig, 18-20. 
Allegro, 27-30. 



Adamantine (Marriage of King, 22, Ode for Music, 36, New Year 1786, 37) ; cf. P. L. 

i. 48, ii. 646, etc. (nine times more, including "adamant" and "adamantean"). 

Warton in two instances and Milton in four apply the word to arms. 
Eden's amaranthine grove (Marriage of King, 58, and cf. Approach of Summer, 45, 

and New Year 1786, 7); cf. P. L. xi. 78, iii. 352. 
In mantle dank (Complaint of Cherwell, 42); cf. Comus, 891, P. L. ix. 179, etc. 
The dimply flood (Triumph of Isis, 15); cf. Comus, 119. 
Flaunting ivy (Pleasures of Melancholy, 36); cf. Comus, 545. 
Ivy's gadding spray (Inscription in a Hermitage, 24); cf. Lycidas, 40. 
Honied flow'rs (The Hamlet, 43); cf. Lycidas, 140, Penseroso, 142. 
Listed plain (Newmarket, 70); cf. Samson, 1087. 
Morning's ivnlight-tinctur'd beam (The Hamlet, 5); cf. P. L. v. 285. 
Shapes . . . trick'd by Fancy's pen (Vale-Royal Abbey, 82); cf. Penseroso, 123, 

Lycidas, 170. 
Vi'let-woven couch (Pleasures of Melancholy, 189); cf. Comus, 233, Nativity, 187. 



PARALLELS — COWPER 



603 



COWPER 

When evening in her sober vest 
Drew the grey curtain of the fading west. Charity, 262-3. 

Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray 
Had in her sober livery all things clad. P. L. iv. 598-g. 

Where covert guile and artifice abound. lb. 285. 

Whether of open war or covert guile. P. L. ii. 41. 

These are thy glorious works, thou Source of good, 

How dimly seen, how faintly understood! 

Thine, and upheld by thy paternal care. 

This universal frame, thus wondrous fair; 

Thy power divine, and bounty beyond thought. 

Adored and praised in all that thou hast wrought. Retirement, 87-92. 

These are thy glorious works, eternal Truth. . . . 

Then these thy glorious works. Hope, 742-50. 

They are thy witnesses, who speak thy power 

And goodness infinite. [Of created works as revealing God.] Task, v. 853-4. 

These are thy glorious works, Parent of good, 

Almighty! thine this universal frame, 

Thus wondrous fair: thyself how wondrous then! 

Unspeakable! who sitt'st above these Heavens 

To us invisible, or dimly seen 

In these thy lowest works; yet these declare 

Thy goodness beyond thought, and power divine. P. L. v. 153-9. 



Delights unfelt before. 
Pangs unfelt before. 

When piping winds shall soon arise. 
While rocking winds are piping loud. 

A massy slab, in fashion square or round. 

Extended wide 
In circuit, undetermined square or round. 



Retirement, 360. 
P. L. ii. 703. 

Mrs. Throckmorton's Bullfinch, 17. 
Penseroso, 126. 

Task, i. 21. 

P. L. ii. io4'^-8. 



In the cushion fixed: 
If cushion might be called what harder seemed. lb. i. 54-5. 

The other Shape, 
If shape it might be calVd that shape had none. P. L. ii. 666-7; cf . i. 227-8. 

(Similar parenthetical repetitions occur in The Task, i. 602-3, ii. 717, 
754-5> V. 162-3, 871-2; Odyssey, ii. 449-5°, 468-9.) 



Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds. 

Ec^h rural sight, each rural sound. 

At dewy eve. 

From morn to eve his solitary task. 

''From morn to eve I fell, a summer's day." 

From morn 
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, 
A summer's day. 

And, armed himself in panoply complete 

Of heavenly temper. 

He, in celestial panoply all arm^d 

Of radiant Urim. 



lb. i. 181. 
P. L. ix. 451. 

lb. i. 316. 
lb. v. 44. 
Iliad, i. 730. 



P. L. i. 742-4. 

Task, ii. 345-6. 
P. L. vi. 760-61. 



6o4 



APPENDIX A 



Bars and bolts 
Grew rusty by disuse , and massy gates 
Forgot their office, opening with a touch. Task, ii. 745-7. 

Every bolt and bar 
Of massy iron or solid rock with ease 
Unfastens: on a sudden open fly. P. L. ii. 877-g. 

As one who, long in thickets and in brakes 

Entangled , winds now this way and now that . . . 

Or having long in miry ways been foiled 

And sore discomfited, from slough to slough 

Pluixging, and half despairing of escape, 

If chance at length he finds a greensward smooth 

And faithful to the foot, his spirits rise. 

He chirrups brisk his ear-erecting steed. 

And winds his way with pleasure and with ease. lb. iii. i-io. 

As one who long detained on foreign shores 

Pants to return. lb. v. 832-3. 

As one who, long in populous city pent. 

Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air. 

Forth issuing on a summer's morn to breathe 

Among the pleasant villages and farms 

Adjoin'd,from each thing met conceives delight . . . 

If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass, 

What pleasing seem'd,for her now pleases more. P. L. ix. 445-53. 

Vernal airs breathe mild. lb. iii. 443. 

Airs, vernal airs, Breathing the smell of field. P. L. iv. 264-5. 

Overlaid with clear translucent glass. lb. iii. 485. 

Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave. Camus, 861. 

The voluble and restless earth. lb. iii. 490. 

This less vohibil Earth. P. L. iv. 5g4. 

Much yet remains Unsung. lb. iii. 605-6. 

Half yet remains unsung. P. L. vii. 21. 

Fell Discord, arbitress of such debate, 

Perched on the sign-post, holds with even hand 

Her undecisive scales. lb. iv. 482-4. 

Chaos umpire sits. 
And by decision more embroils the fray 
By which he reigns; next him, high arbiter, 
Chance governs all. P. L. ii. goy-io. 

(Cf. P. L. ii. 960-67, where Discord is mentioned in connection with Chaos.) 

Would I had fallen upon those happier days. lb. iv. 513. 

Though fall'n on evil days. P. L. vii. 25. 

Leaving unconcerned 

The cheerful haunts of man. lb. v. 41-2. 

In nooks obscure, far from the ways of men. lb. vi. 842. 

Exiled . . . from every cheerful haunt of man. Iliad vi. 247-8. 

Far from the cheerful haunt of men. Comus, 388. 

From the cheerful ways of men Cut off. P. L. iii. 46-7. 

Half on wing And half on foot. Task, v. 62-3. 

Half on foot, Half flying. P. L.ii. 941-2. 



PARALLELS — COWPER 605 

Arrowy sleet. lb. v. 140. 

Sharp sleet of arrowy showers. P. R. Hi. 324. 

(But cf. Gray's Fatal Sisters, 3, "Iron-sleet of arrowy shower.") 

Silently as a dream the fabric rose. lb. v. 144. 
Anon out of the earth a fabric huge 

Rose like an exhalation. P. L. i. 710-11. 

(Of a palace in each case.) 

^n that sickly, foul , 
Opprobrious residence he finds them all. 

Propense his heart to idols. lb. v. 583-5. 

For their dwelling-place 

Accept this dark opprobrious den of shame. P. L. ii. 57-8. 

Hearts, propense enough before To waver. Samson, 455-6. 

Ages of hopeless misery. lb. v. 607. 

Ages of hopeless end. P. L. ii. 186. 

(Of hell in each case.) 

To gratulate the new-created earth. lb. v. 820. 

To gratulate the sweet return of morn. P. R. iv. 4j8. 

Wanders lost, 

With intellects bemazed in endless doubt. lb. v. 847-8. 

And found no end, in wandering mazes lost. P. L. ii. 561. 
(Of religious doctrines in each case.) 

Pomona, Pales, Pan, 

And Flora and Vertumnus. lb. vi. 233-4. 

To Pales, or Pomona . . . when she fled Vertumnus. P. L. ix. 393-5. 

[The effect of the fall of man upon the animals, as described in The Task, vi. 368-83, 
was probably suggested by Paradise Lost, x. 710-14, xi. 182-90.] 

Fixed motionless, and petrified with dread. lb. vi. 538. 

In stony fetters fix' d and motionless. Comus, 819. 

Sheer o'er the craggy barrier. lb. vi. 554. 

Sheer o'er the chariot front. Iliad, xvi. 494. 

Sheer o'er the crystal battlements. P. L. i. 742. 

The looms of Ormus, and the mines of Ind. Task, vi. 806. 

The wealth of Ormus and of Ind. P. L. ii. 2. 

And Saba's spicy groves. lb. vi. 807. 

Sabaean odours from the spicy shore. P. L. iv. 162. 

From yonder withered spray. To the Nightingale, 2. 

O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray. Nightingale sonnet, i. 
(The riming word is "May" in each case.) 

The grand consult dissolved. Iliad, i. 385. 

The great consult began. P. L. i. 798. 

The Stygian council thus dissolved. P. L. ii. 506. 

What word hath passed thy lips, Satumian Jove, 

Thou most severe! lb. i. 678-9. 

What word hath pass'd thy lips, Jove most severe! lb. iv. 29, viii. 537, xviii. 446. 

What words have pass'd thy lips, Adam severe! P. L. ix. 11 44. 

(Said by a woman to her husband in each case. Cowper has similar lines, ib. 
viii. 240-41, xiv. 97, Odyssey, i. 81.) 



6o6 APPENDIX A 

Writhing to and fro . Iliad , ii . 3 2 1 . 

Convolved with pain he lay. lb. xiii. 752. 

Then Satan first knew pain, 

And writhed him to and fro convolved. P. L. vi. 327-8. 

And twitch'd her fragrant robe. lb. iii. 458. 

And twitched his mantle Hue. Lycidas, ig2. 

When through the adamantine gates he pass'd. lb. viii. 422; cf. ii. 324. 

These adamantine gates. P. L. ii. 853; cf. 436. 

(Of hell in each case.) 

Smooth-sliding streams. lb. xv. 328. 

Smooth-sliding Mincius. Lycidas, 86. 

Tower'd city. lb. xv. 891. 

Towered cities. Allegro, 117. 

With nimble steps and short. lb. xvi. 739. 

With toilsome step and difficult. On Finding Heelof a Shoe, 35. 

With wandering steps and slow. P. L. xii. 648. 

Earthward he slopes again his westering wheels. Odyssey, xi. 19. 

Westering apace. Iliad, xxiii. 195. 

Toward Heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel. Lycidas, 31. 
(Pointed out by Cowper in each place.) 

Diction 

Covert (as a noun, Task, i. 233, Iliad, viii. 305); cf. P. L. iii. 39, iv. 693, etc. 

Vapours dank (Task, i. 438, iii. 499); cf. P. L. vii. 441, ix. 179, etc. 

Ever-during brass (Task, v. 710, Odyssey, xi. 704); cf. P. L. iii. 45, vii. 206. 

Hedge-row shrubs (Retirement, 419, and cf. Task, i. 173); cf. Allegro, 58. 

Horrent (Iliad, vii. 69, xiii. 413); cf. P. L. ii. 513. Of arms in each case. 

Small interval between (Iliad, iii. 134, x. 191, xiii. 734, xvi. 557); cf. P. L. vi. 105. 
Of space between combatants in each case. 

Intestine war (Mutual Forbearance, 48); cf. P. L. vi. 259, ii. looi. 

Massy (Task, i. 21, 59, ii. 746, Iliad, xiii. 620, 1007); cf. P. L. i. 285, 703, etc. 

Misdeems (Task, iv. 685); cf. P. L. Lx. 301, P. R. i. 424. 

Nitrous air (Task, iii. 32); cf. P. L. iv. 815, vi. 512. 

Oary barks (Iliad, ii. 193, xviii. 318, Odyssey, iii. 205); cf. P. L. vii. 440. 

O'erleap (of barriers, Task, ii. 55, iii. 681, Table Talk, 302); cf. P. L. iv. 181, 583. 

Shagg'd (Iliad, xv. 378); cf. Comus, 429. 

Smit with (Task, v. 560); cf. P. L. iii. 29. 

Speculative height (Task, i. 289, Jackdaw, 13); cf. P. L. xii. 588-9, P. R. iv. 236. 

Tempest (as a verb, Iliad, xv. 168); cf. P. L. vii. 412. Pointed out by Cowper. 

Tricked with flowers (Task, vi. 992); cf. Penseroso, 123, Lycidas, 170. 

Unwieldy joy (Queen's Visit to London, 20); cf. P. L. iv. 345, vii. 411. Of sea- 
monsters in the first and third cases. 

Well attired (of a plant, Task, vi. 168); cf. Lycidas, 146. 



PARALLELS — WORDSWORTH 



607 



WORDSWORTH 1 

Toil, small as pigmies in the gulf profound. 

The cataract had borne him down 

Into the gulf profound. 

Bishops and Priests, think what a gulf profound. 

A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog. 

The swan uplifts his chest, and backward flings 

His neck, a varying arch, between his towering wings. 

Close by her mantling wings' embraces prest. 

Fair is the Swan, whose majesty, prevailing. . . . 

Behold! the mantling spirit of reserve 

Fashions his neck into a goodly curve; 

An arch thrown back between luxuriant wings. 
The swan, with arched neck 

Between her white wings mantling proudly. 

(Wordsworth also speaks of the "mantling" celandine, To the Small 
Celandine, 2d poem, 24; "mantling triumphs," Sonnet, "Grief, thou hast 
lost," 14; and "mantling ale," Duddon, xiii. 12.) 

Hear at morn 
The hound, the horse's tread, and mellow horn. 
Oft listening how the hounds and horn 
Cheerly rouse the slumbering Morn. 



Evening Walk, 163. 

Idle Shepherd-Boys, 69-70. 
Eccl. Sonnets, III. xvi. 12. ^^ 
P. L. ii. 5g2. 



Evening Walk, 218-31. 



Dion (original form) , 1-7, 
P. L. vii. 438-g; of. V. 27g. 



Ah me! all light is mute amid the gloom. 

The interlunar cavern of the tomb. 

"As the moon Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.' 

The Sun to me is dark 

And silent as the Moon, 

When she deserts the night, 

Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. 

The "parting Genius" sighs with hollow breath. 
The parting Genius is with sighing sent. 

Bosomed deep in chestnut groves. 

Bosomed high in tufted trees. 

(Wordsworth uses "bosomed" three times more 
hidden by trees. "Embosom," "embosoming," 
uses nine times; cf. P. L. iii. 75, v. 597.) 

And neighbouring moon, that coasts the vast profound, 
Wheel pale and silent her diminish 'd round. 

While overhead the moon . . . 
Wheels her pale course. 
A gulf profound. 
Round through the vast profundity obscure. 

Tinged like an angel's smile all rosy red. 
Unveiling timidly a cheek 
Suffused with blushes of celestial hue. 
To whom the Angel, with a smile that glowed 
Celestial rosy red, love's proper hue. 



Evening Walk, 244-5. 
Allegro, 53-4. 

lb. (1793 ed.), 267-8. 
Prelude, vii. 283-4. 



Samson, 86-g. 

Desc. Sketches, 71. 
Nativity, 186. 

lb. 78. 

Allegro, 78. 

, twice in the sense of 

and "embosomed" he 



lb. (1793 ed.), 382-3. 

P. L. i. 784-6. 
P. L. ii. 5g2. 
P. L. vii. 22g. 

Desc. Sketches, 475. 
Eccl. Sonnets, II. xxii. 5-6. 
P. L. via. 6i8-ig. 



> These parallels are nearly all taken from a collection of material regarding Wordsworth's debt to 
Milton, undertaken at Cornell University by Mrs. Alice M. Dunbar of Wilmington, Delaware, under the 
direction of Mr. Lane Cooper, who called my attention to the work. They are published here for the first 
time by the very kind consent of Mrs. Dunbar, whose list contains many more. 



6o8 



APPENDIX A 



Dim religious groves embow'r. 

Casting a dim religious light. 

Etrurian shades High over-arch'd embower. 

(Wordsworth also has ten cases of 

usually of trees.) 

His larum-bell from village-tow'r to tow'r 
Swing on th' astounded ear it's dull undying roar. 
The solemn curfew swinging long and deep. 
/ hear thefar-ojff curfew sound . . . 
Swinging slow with sullen roar. 

Through his brain 
At once the griding iron passage found. 
The griding sword with discontinuous wound 
Passed through him. 

When I behold the ruins of that face, 

Those eyeballs dark — dark beyond hope of light. 

Nor appeared Less than Archangel ruin'd. . . . 

.... Darken' d so, yet shone 
Above them all the Archangel; but his face. 
Oh dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, 
Irrecoverably dark , total eclipse 
Without all hope of day! 

But, oh the heavy change! 

And, O the change! 

And partner of my loss. — O heavy change! 

But, O the heavy change, now thou art gone! 

Suffer my genial spirits to decay. 
So much I feel my genial spirits droop. 



Desc. Sketches (1793 ed.), 124. 
Penseroso, 160. 
P. L. i. 303-4. 
'embowering" and "embowered," 



lb. (1793 ed.), 778-9- 
Evening Walk ( 1 793 ed . ) , 3 1 J 

Penseroso, 74-6. 

Guilt and Sorrow, 492-3. 
P. L. vi. 329-30. 

Borderers, i. 135-6. 
P. L. i. 592-600. 

Samson, 80-82. 

Simon Lee, 25. 
Mother's Return, 53. 
Excursion, iii. 669. 
Lycidas, 37. 

Tintern Abbey, 113. 
Samson, 594. 



Could Father Adam open his eyes 
And see this sight beneath the skies, 

He'd wish to close them again. Redbreast chasing the Butterfly, 12-14. 

(A reference, as Wordsworth pointed out, to P. L. xi. 185-90.) 



Thou art ... a thing "beneath our shoon." 

The dull swain 
Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon. 

(Of a flower in each case.) 



To the Small Celandine (2), 49-50. 
Comus, 634-5. 



Stanzas in "Castle of Indolence," 60-61. 



The beetle panoplied in gems and gold, 

A mailed angel on a battle-day. 

Up rose the victor Angels, and to arms 

The matin trumpet sung; in arms they stood 

Of golden panoply, refulgent host. . . . 

He, in celestial panoply all arm'd 

Of radiant Urim, work divinely -wrought. P. L. vi. 525-7, 760-1. 

Gems and gold. P. L. it. 271, vi. 475. 

(Wordsworth also has "whose panoply is not a thing put on" — "Who 
rises on the banks," 17; and "your scaly panoplies" — "The soaring 
lark," 23.) 

To overleap At will the crystal battlements . . . 

O'er Limbo lake with aery flight to steer. 

And on the verge of Chaos hang in fear. Departure from Grasmere, 5-12', 



PARALLELS — WORDSWORTH 



609 



Eccl. Sonnets, II. xxviii. 6-9. 

P. L. iv. 181-2. 
P. L. i. 742. 



P.L. 



t. 225. 

it. 40 J. 



tt. gij-ig. 



The "trumpery" that ascends in bare display — 

Bulls, pardons, relics, cowls black, white, and grey — 

Upwhirled, and flying o'er the ethereal plain 

Fast bound for Limbo Lake. 

At one slight bound high overleaped all hound 

Of hill or highest wall. 

Sheer o'er the crystal battlements. 

Steers his flight. 

Spread his aery flight. 

Into this wild Abyss [Chaos] the wary Fiend 

Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while. 

Pondering his voyage. 

Eremites and friars 
White, black, and grey, with all their trumpery. . . . 
Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wearers, tost 
And fluttered into rags; then reliques, beads, 
Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, hulls. 
The sport of winds: all these, upwhirVd aloft . . . 
Into a limbo large and broad. 

Stern Daughter of the Voice of God! 

God so commanded, afid left that command 
Sole daughter of his voice. 

A watchful heart Still couchant. "When, to the attractions," 81- 

Changes oft His couchant watch. P. L. iv. 405-6. 

(Wordsworth also speaks of a " couchant " lion, fawn, doe: To Enterprise, 

35; "Long has the dew," 5; White Doe, i. 203,) 



P.L. 



tit. 474-5, 490-5. 



Ode to Duty, i. 
P. L. ix. 652-j. 



Alas! what boots it? — who can hide? 
Alas! what boots the long laborious quest? 
"What boots," continued she, "to mourn?" 
What boots the sculptured tomb? 
Alas! what boots it with uncessant care? 

The gift of this adventurous song. 
Invoke thy aid to my advent' rous song. 

The earth is all before me. 
The world was all before them. 

Immortal verse 
Thoughtfully fitted to the Orphean lyre. 

Raptures of the lyre; 
And wisdom married to immortal verse. 
Whose waves the Orphean lyre forbad to meet. 
Where is the Orphean lyre, or Druid harp, 
To accompany the verse? 

With other notes than to the Orphean lyre I sung. 
Soft Lydian airs Married to immortal verse. 

With crosses and with cyphers scribbled o'er. 
With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er. 

Hence life, and change, and beauty, solitude 
More active even than "best society." 
Solitude to her Is blithe society. 
For solitude sometimes is best society. 

Her pealing organ was my neighbour too. 
There let the pealing organ blow. 



The Waggoner, 702. 
Tyrolese Sonnets, iv. i. 
Egyptian Maid, 97. 
Excursion, vi. 615. 
Lycidas, 64. 

The Waggoner, 784. 
P. L. i. 13. 

Prelude, i. 14. 
P. L. xii. 646. ■ 

lb. i. 232-3. 

Excursion, vii. 535-6. 
Source of the Danube, 9. 

To the Clouds, 60-61. 
P. L. Hi. 17-18. 
Allegro, 136-7. 

Prelude, i. 511. 
P. L. via. 83. 

lb. ii. 294-5. 
Characteristics of a Child, 12-13. 
P. L. ix. 24g. 

Prelude, iii. 57. 
Penseroso, 161. 



6lO APPENDIX A 

This is, in truth, heroic argument. Prelude, iii. 184. 

Argument Not less but more heroic. P. L. ix. 13-14; cf. 28-g. 

Stood almost single . . . 

Darkness before, and danger's voice behind. lb. iii. 287-8. 

In darkness, and with dangers compass'd round, 

And solitude. P. L. vii. 27-8. 

(Of Milton in each case.) 

Grain-tinctured, drenched in empyrean light. lb. iv. 328. 

Sky-tinctured grain. P. L. v. 285. 

Dews, vapours, and the melody of birds. lb. iv. 331. 

Walks, and the melody of birds. P. L. viii. 528. 

Whether by native prose, or numerous verse. lb. v. 200. 

In prose or numerous verse. P. L. v. 150. 

Her brood, Though fledged and feathered. lb. v. 246-7. 

Their brood . . . feathered soon and fledge. P. L. vii. 418-20. 

(Of young fowl in each case.) 

These mighty workmen of our later age. 
Who, with a broad highway, have overbridged 

The froward chaos of futurity. lb. v. 347-9. 

(A reference to P. L. x. 249-320.) 

A pensive sky, sad days, and piping winds. lb. vi. 174. 

While rocking winds are piping loud. Penseroso, 126. 

That seemed another morn Risen on mid noon. lb. vi. 197-8. 

Seems another morn Risen on mid-noon. P. L. v. 310-11. 

The mountains more by blackness visible 

And their own size, than any outward light. lb. vi. 714-15. 

No light, but rather darkness visible. P. L. i. 63. 

Lead his voice through many a maze. lb. vii. 555. 

The melting voice through mazes running. Allegro, 142. 

Tract more exquisitely fair 
Than that famed paradise of ten thousand trees, 
Or Gehol's matchless gardens. lb. viii. 75-7. 

Spot more delicious than those gardens feign'd 
Or of revived Adonis, or renown' d 
Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son. P. L. ix. 439-41. 

And boon nature's lavish help. lb. viii. 81. 

Of mountain-quiet and boon nature's grace. Eccl. Sonnets, I. i. 4. 

But Nature boon 

Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain. P. L. iv. 242-3. 

The curious traveller . . . sees, or thinks he sees. Prelude, viii. 560-65. 

Some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees. P. L. i. 783-4. 

(Of the supernatural in each case.) 

Such opposition as aroused 
The mind of Adam, yet in Paradise 
Though fallen from bliss, when in the East he saw 
Darkness ere day's mid course, and morning light 
More orient in the western cloud, that drew 
O'er the blue firmament a radiant white. 
Descending slow with something heavenly fraught. lb. viii. 658-64. 



PARALLELS — WORDSWORTH 6 1 1 

Why in the east 
Darkness ere day's mid-course, and morning-light 
More orient in yon western clotid, that draws 
O'er the blue firmament a radiant white, 

And slow descends, with something heavenly fraught? P. L. xi. 2oy-j. 

And oft amid the "busy hum" I seemed. lb. viii. 680. 

And the busy hum of men. Allegro, 118. 

Or crown of burning seraphs as they sit 

In the empyrean. lb. x. 522-3. 

From the pure Empyrean when he [God] sits. P. L. Hi. 57. 

(Wordsworth also uses "empyrean" twice as aft adjective; Milton has 

it five times as a noun and once as an adjective.) 

And thou, O flowery field Of Enna! lb. xi. 419-20. 

Not that fair field 

Of Enna, where Proserpin gathering flowers. P. L. iv. 268-g. 

Not like a temple rich with pomp and gold. lb. xiii. 229. 

With gay religions full of pomp and gold. P. L. j. 372. 

That broods Over the dark abyss. lb. xiv. 71-2. 

Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast Abyss. P. L. i. 21. 

Hence endless occupation for the Soul, 

^Vhether discursive or intuitive. lb. xiv. 119-20. 

Whence the soul 
Reason receives, and reason is her being. 

Discursive, or intuitive. P- L. v. 486-8. 

And substitute a universe of death 

For that which moves with light and life informed. lb. xiv. 160-61. 

A universe of death. P. L. ii. 622. 

All alike inform' d With radiant light. P. L. Hi. 593-4. 

And sought that beauty, which, as Milton sings. 

Hath terror in it. lb. xiv. 245-6. 

Not terrible, though terror be in love 

And beauty. P- L. ix. 490-1. 

Methought I saw the footsteps of a throne. Sonnet, "Methought I saw," i. 

Methought I saw my late espoused saint. Sonnet, ^'Methought I saw," i. 

(But cf. Ralegh's sonnet on the Faerie Queene.) 

His genius shook the buskined stage. Seat in Coleorton, 16. 

Ennobled hath the buskin'd stage. Penseroso, 102. 

Her duty is to stand and wait. White Doe, iv. 132. 

They also serve who only stand and wait. Sonnet on his Blindness, 14. 

But ere the Moon had sunk to rest 

In her pale chambers of the west. lb. iv. 223-4. 

Pacing toward the other goal 

Of his [the sun's] chamber in the east. Comus, locy-ioi. 

With woollen cincture. lb. vii. 57. 

Withfeather'd cincture. P. L. ix. 11 17. 

(Of clothing in each case. Wordsworth also has "encincture": Source 
of Danube, 8; Excursion, v. 159; Eccl. Sonnets, III. xli. 9.) 



6l2 



APPENDIX A 



A hut, by tufted trees defended. 

Upon a rising ground a grey church-tower, 

Whose battlements were screened by tufted trees. 

[A chapel] tufted with an ivy grove. 

Towers and battlements it sees 

Bosom'd high in tujtcd trees. 

On a plat of rising ground. 

Dear Liberty! stern Nymph of soul untamed; 
Sweet Nymph, O rightly of the mountains named! 
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty. 

For they have learnt to open and to close 
The ridges of grim war. 

Expert . . . to . . . open when, and when to close 
The ridges of grim war. 

Like the bright confines of another world. 
Of those bright confines [heaven]. 

I sing: — "fit audience let me find though few!" 
So prayed, more gaining than he asked, the Bard - 
In holiest mood. Urania, I shall need 
Thy guidance, or a greater Muse, if such 
Descend to earth or dwell in highest heaven! 
Descend from Heaven, Urania. . . . 

.... Still govern thou my song, 
Urania, and fit audience find, though few. 

Under the covert of these clustering elms. 
Under the covert of some ancient oak. 

That left half-told the preternatural tale. 
That left half told The story. 

Commenced in pain. 
In pain commenced, and ended without peace. 

Though fair n on evil days, 
On evil days though faWn, and evil tongues. 

Yet cease I not to struggle, and aspire. 

Yet not the more 
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt. 



White Doe, vii. 142. 

Excursion, v. 80-81. 
Peter Bell, 855. 

Allegro, 77-8. 
Penseroso, 73. 

Tyrolese Sonnets, ii. 2-3. 
Allegro, 36. 



Spanish Guerillas, 3-4. 

P. L. vi. 233-6. 

View from Black Comb, 27. 
P. L. ii. 395. 



Excursion, preface, 23-7. 



P. L. vii. I, 30-31. 

lb. i. SI. 

P. R. i. 305; cf. ii. 262-3. 

lb. i. 179. 
Penseroso, 109-10. 



lb. iv. 2-3. 

P. L. vii. 25-6. 
lb. iv. 126. 

P. L. Hi. 26-7. 
lb. iv. 231. 



Who dwell on earth, yet breathe empyreal air. 

/ have presumed. 
An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air. P. L. vii. 13-14. 

("Empyreal air" occurs again in Epitaphs from Chiabrera, viii. 20, and 

"empyreal" in five other places.) 

Upon the breast of new-created earth 

Man walked; and when and wheresoe'er he moved, 

Alone or mated, solitude was not. 

He heard, borne on the wind, the articulate voice 

Of God; and Angels to his sight appeared 

Crowning the glorious hills of paradise; 

Or through the groves gliding like morning mist 

Enkindled by the sun. He sate — and talked 

With winged Messengers. lb. iv. 631-9. 



PARALLELS — WORDSWORTH 6 1 3 

(This appears to be a reference to God's talks with Adam and Eve, the 
visit of Raphael, Michael, etc., in Paradise Lost. Lines 634-7 seem to 
refer to the passages. 

How often, from the steep 

Of echoing hill or thicket, have we heard 

Celestial voices! P. L. iv. 680-82. 

For I descry 

From yonder blazing cloud that veils the hill 

One of the heavenly host. P. L. xi. 228-30. 

The Cherubim descended; on the ground 

Gliding meteorous, as evening mist. P. L. xii. 628-g; cf. ix. 17^80.) 

Large and massy; for duration built; 

With pillars crowded. lb. v. 145-6. 

With antic pillars massy proof. Penseroso, 158. 

If to be weak is to be wretched — miserable, 

As the lost Angel by a human voice 

Hath mournfully pronounced. lb. v. 318-20. 

Fall'n Cherub, to be weak is miserable. P. L. i. 157. 

"Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified." lb. vi. 260. 

Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified. P. L. v. 8gg. 

(Wordsworth's "Self -re vie wed, self-catechised, self-punished, iJ. vi. 386- 
7, seems made by analogy to this line of Milton's and similar ones: e. g., 
P. L. ii. 185, iii. 372-5, and particularly iii. 130, "self-tempted, self- 
depraved.") 

That mixture of earth's mould. lb. vi. 273. 

Can any mortal mixture of earth^s mould. Comus, 244. 

(Of a person in each case.) 

Light. . . Whose sacred influence. lb. vii. 482-4. 

The sacred influence Of light appears. P. L. ii. 1034-5. 

But each instinct with spirit. lb. vii. 509. 

Itself instinct with spirit. P. L. vi. J52. 

(Wordsworth also has "instinct with" music, freshness, malice, etc.: 
Morning Exercise, 29; Duddon, iii. 13; Eccl. Sonnets, I. vi. 2; etc.) 

A many-windowed fabric huge. lb. viii. 169. 

Strains that call forth upon empyreal ground 
Immortal Fabrics, rising to the sound 

Of penetrating harps and voices sweet. Cathedral at Cologne, 12-14. 

Rising like an exhalation. The Waggoner, 689. 

Anon out of the earth a fabric huge 
Rose like an exhalation, with the sound 

Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet. P. L. i. 710-12. 

(Of a building in every case but the third.) 

Or lapse of liquid element. Excursion, viii. 331. 

The liquid lapse serene [of a river]. Duddon, xx. 4; cf. iv. 7. 

And liquid lapse of murmuring streams. P. L. viii. 263. 

(Wordsworth also speaks of the lapse of water in three other places: 
"Never enlivened," 14; Prelude, iv. 383; Excursion, iii. 93.) 

Their human form divine. Excursion, ix. 151. 

Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine. P. L. iii. 44. 

They know if I be silent, morn or even. lb. ix. 750. 

Witness if I be silent, morn or even. P. L. v. 202. 



6i4 



APPENDIX A 



Redundant are thy locks. 

Graced with redundant hair, lopas sings. 

These redundant locks. 

(Virgil's word is ' 



Laodamia, 59. 
Aeneid, 121. 
Samson, §68. 
crinitus," long-haired.) 



Thus was a Brother by a Brother saved; 
With whom a crown (temptation that hath set 
Discord in hearts of men till they have braved 
Their nearest kin with deadly purpose met) 
'Gainst duty weighed, and faithful love, did seem 
A thing of no esteem. 

Thus was a Brother sav'd by a Brother, to whofn love of a 
Crown, the thing that so often dazles, and vitiats mortal 
men, for which, thousands of neerest blood have destroyed 
each other, was in respect of Brotherly dearness, a con- 
temptible thing. 

Bisect her orbed shield. 
Gripe fast his orbed shield. 

But with majestic lowliness endued. 
With lowliness majestic. 

Your once sweet memory, studious walks and shades ! 
Her sweet recess . . . studious walks and shades. 



Artegal and Blidure, 234-9. 



History of Britain, book i. 

"Who rises on the banks," 27. 
P. L. vi. 543. 

Dion, 14. 
P. L. via. 42. 

lb. 44. 

P. R. iv. 242-3. 



Deaf was the Sea; 
Her waves rolled on. . . . 

Then Canute, rising from the invaded throne . . . 
Said ... "He only is a King, and he alone 
Deserves the name (this truth the billows preach) 

Whose everlasting laws, sea, earth, and heaven, obey." Fact and Imagination, 6-14. 
The Sea, as before, came rowling on. . . . Wherat the 
King [Canute] quickly riseing . . . [said] that none indeed 
deserv'd the name of a King, but he whose Eternal Laws 
both Heav'n, Earth , and Sea obey. History of Britain , book vi. 

"A little onward lend thy guiding hand 
To these dark steps, a little further on!" 
A little onward lend thy guiding hand 
To these dark steps, a little further on. 



"A little onward lend," 1-2. 

Samson, 1-2: 

lb. 18. 

P. L. ix. 452. 



Thy nymph -like step swift bounding o'er the lawn. 
// chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass. 

Into the "abrupt abyss." lb. 31. 

(The quotation is apparently a confusion of "the vast Abyss," P.L.i. 21, 
and "the vast abrupt," ii. 409.) 



Where ravens spread their plumy vans. 

Who on their plumy vans received Him soft. [Of angels.] 

What a vast abyss is there! 

In the vast abyss. 

On the vast Abyss. 

The vast immeasurable Abyss. 

To Niphates' top invited , 
Whither spiteful Satan steered. 



lb. 32. 

P. R. iv. 583. 

Ascent of Helvellyn, 10. 
Peter Bell, 44. 
P. L. i. 21. 
P. L. vii. 211. 



(A reference to P. L. iii. 741-2.) 



Ascent of Helvellyn, 29-30. 



PARALLELS — WORDSWORTH 6 1 5 

Of her [the bee's] laden thigh . Vernal Ode , 115. 

While the bee with honied thigh. Penseroso, 142. 

That Star, so proud of late, looked wan; 
And reeled with visionary stir 
In the blue depth, like Lucifer 

Cast headlong to the pit! Pilgrim's Dream, 53-6. 

(A reference to P. L. i. 44-5.) 

Time was when field and watery cove 

With modulated echoes ^ang, 

While choirs of fervent Angels sang 

Their vespers in the grove. Composed on an Evening of Beauty, 9-12. 

How often, from the steep 
Of echoing hill or thicket, have we heard 
Celestial voices to the midnight air, 
Sole, or responsive each to other's note, 
Singing their great Creator! P. L. iv. 680-4. 

Or obvious hill. "As the cold aspect," 3. 

Nor obvious hill. P. L. vi. 6g. 

A Book came forth of late, called Peter Bell; 
Not negligent the style; — the matter? — good. 

"On the Detraction which followed the Publication of a certain Poem," 1-2. 
A Book was writ of late called Tetrachordon, 
And woven close, both matter, form, and style. 

"On the Detraction which followed upon my writing certain Treatises," 1-2. 

Bold Spirit! who art free to rove 

Among the starry courts of Jove. To Enterprise, 14-15. 

Before the starry threshold of Jove's court 

My mansion is. [Of the attendant Spirit.] Comus, 1-2. 

The sweet Bird, misnamed the melancholy. lb. 145. 

Sweet bird . . . Most musical, most melancholy! Penseroso, 61-2. 

(Of the nightingale in each case.) 

We feel that we are greater than we know. After-thought (Duddon) , 14. 

And feel that I am happier than I know. P. L. viii. 282. 

Shall lack not power the " meeting soul to pierce ! " Tour on Continent, Dedication, 14. 
Such as the meeting soul may pierce. Allegro, 138. 

That Roland clove with huge two-handed sway. Aix-la-Chapelle, 12. 

The sword of Michael smote, andfelVd 
Squadrons at once: with huge two-handed sway. P. L. vi. 250-1. 

Down the irriguoi."=; valley. Our Lady of the Snow, 26. 

Some irriguous valley. P. L. iv. 255. 

Thus after Man had fallen . . . 

Throngs of celestial visages. 

Darkening like water in the breeze, 

A holy sadness shared. Eclipse of the Sun, 55-60. 

Soon as the unwelcome news 
From Earth arrived at Heaven gate, displeased 
All were who heard; dim sadness did not spare 
Tltat time celestial visages. P- L. x. 21-4. 



6i6 



APPENDIX A 



Three Cottage Girls, 70. 
Eccl. Sonnets, I. i. 14. 



Bright Spirit, not with amaranth crowned. 

Immortal amaranth. 

Their crowns inwove with amarant and gold: 

Immortal amarant. P. L. Hi. 3S2-j. 

(Wordsworth also has "amaranthine flower" — "Weak is the will," 11; 

"amaranthine wreaths" — "When the soft hand," 50; "garlands . . . 

of amaranthine bloom" — "On to lona," 13; "amaranthine crown" — 

"The vestal priestess," 7.) 

Fetch, ye that post o'er seas and lands. 
O whither with such eagerness of speed? . . . 
.... thus post ye over vale and height 
To rest? 

Thousands at his bidding speed, 
And post o'er land and ocean without rest. 

As the dread Voice that speaks from out the sea. 
The dread voice is past. 

Springs from the ground the morn to gratulate. 

To gratulate the sweet return of morn. 

(Of birds in each case. Wordsworth uses some form of "gratulate" in 
seven other cases — there are two other instances in Milton — and has 
"gratulant" once, perhaps by analogy to Milton's "congratulant," 
P. L. X. 458.) 

Not Iris, issuing from her cloudy shrine. 
Met by the rainbow's form divine, 
Issuing from her cloudy shrine. 
Transplanted from her cloudy shrine. 

Gales sweet as those that over Eden blew. 

Now gentle gales, 
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense 
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole 
Those balmy spoils. [Describing Eden.] 

More sweet than odours caught by him who sails 
Near spicy shores of Araby the blest. 

As when to them who sail . . . 
Sabaean odours from the spicy shore 
Of Araby the Blest. 

Harp! could'st thou venture, on thy boldest string, 
The faintest note to echo which the blast 
Caught from the hand of Moses as it pass'd 
O'er Sinai's top, or from the Shepherd-king, 
Early awake, by Siloa's brook, to sing. 
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that on the secret top 
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire 
That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed . . . 

. ... or, if Sion hill 
Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook . . . 

.... my adventurous song. P. L. i. 6-13. 

When Alpine Vales threw forth a suppliant cry, 

The majesty of England interposed 

And the sword stopped; the bleeding wounds were closed; 

And Faith preserved her ancient purity. 

How little boots that precedent of good! lb. III. vii. 1-5. 



Elegiac Stanzas (Goddard), 44. 

To the Clouds, 4, 9-10. 

Sonnet on his Blindness, 12-13. 

At Dover, 11. 

Lycidas, 132. 

Eccl. Sonnets, II. xiv. 2. 
P. R. iv. 438. 



lb. xxii. 9. 

The Triad, 84-5. 
P. L. vii. 360. 

Eccl. Sonnets, II. xxiv. 14. 



P. L. iv. 156-g. 



lb. xxxix. 9-10. 



P. L. iv. isg-63. 



lb. xlvi. 1-5. 



PARALLELS — WORDSWORTH 



617 



(Probably a reference to Milton's Piemontese sonnet, with a borrowing 

from it and one from Lycidas: 
Even Ihetn who kept thy truth so pure of old. Sonnet, j. 

AlasI what boots it with uncessant care. Lycidas, 64.) 

Heart-thrilling strains, that cast, before the eye 

Of the devout, a veil of ecstasy! lb. xliv. 13-14. 

Dissolve me into ecstasies, 

And bring all Heaven before mine eyes? Penseroso, 165-6. 

(Of organ music in a church in each case.) 



Down to their "dark opprobrious den." 
Accept this dark opprobrious den of shame. 

With "sober certainties" of love. 
Such sober certainty of waking bliss. 

All summer-long the happy Eve 

Of this fair Spot her flowers may bind. 



To Lady Fleming (i), 83. 

P. L. a. 58. 

"O dearer far," 8. 
Comus, 263. 



(A reference to P. L. ix. 424-31.) 



Flower Garden, 19-20. 



In the delight of moral prudence schooled. 

Teachers best Of moral prudence, with delight received. 

Or "the rathe primrose as it dies 

Forsaken" in the shade! 

Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies. 

Thanks not Heaven amiss. 
And thank the gods amiss. 

In ten thousand dewy rays. 

Shot parallel to the Earth his dewy ray. 

Even She whose Lydian airs inspire. 
Lap me in soft Lydian airs. 

The hymn 
Of joy, that from her utmost walls 
The sLx-days' Work, by flaming Seraphim 
Transmits to Heaven. 



Pillar of Trajan, 31. 
P. R. iv. 262-2- 



To May, 59-60. 
Lycidas, 142. 

Retirement, 14. 

Comus, 177. 

The Triad, 130. 
P. L. V. 141. 

Power of Sound, 76. 
Allegro, Ij6. 



lb. 201-4. 



(This seems to be a reference to the hymns of the angels at the completion 
of God's "six days' work, a World," in Paradise Lost, vii. 557-634. The 
account in Genesis contains no hymns and no seraphim.) 



Nor stopped, till in the dappling east 
Appeared unwelcome dawn. 
Till the dappled dawn doth rise. 

And their necks play, involved in rings. 
Like sinless snakes in Eden's happy land. 

About them frisking played 
All beasts of the earth, since wild. . . . 

.... close the serpent sly. 
Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine 
His braided train. 

With copious eulogy in prose or rhyme. 
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. 



Russian Fugitive, 15-16. 
Allegro, 44. 

Egyptian Maid, 322-3. 



P. L. iv. J40-49. 

Elegiac Musings, i. 
P. L. i. 16. 



6i8 



APPENDIX A 



Which moonlit elves, far seen by credulous eyes, 
Enter in dance. 

Or faery elves, 
Whose midnight revels, by a forest side 
Or fountain, sotne belated peasant sees. 

The sovereign Architect. 
The sovran Architect. 

(Of God in each case.) 

The pillared vestibule . . . the roof embowed. 
The high embowed roof, With antic pillars. 

He hath been an Elm without his Vine, 
And her bright dower of clustering charities, 
That, round his trunk and branches, might have clung 
Enriching and adorning. 

Or they led the vine 
To wed her elm; she, spoused, about him twines 
Her marriageable arms, and with her brings 
Her dower, the adopted clusters, to adorn 
His barren leaves. 



Place of Burial, 4-3. 



P. L. i. 781-3. 

Cave of Staffa (i), 13. 
P. L. V. 256. 



lb. (2), 5-6. 
Penseroso, 157-8. 



Death of Charles Lamb, 73-6. 



P. L. V. 215-19. 



So pure, so fraught with knowledge and delight. 
As to be likened in his Followers' minds 
To that which our first Parents, ere the fall 
From their high state darkened the Earth with fear. 

Held with all Kinds in Eden's blissful bowers. Cuckoo at Laverna, 61-5. 

(References to P. L. iv. 340-52.) 

Intermingling with his dream . . . 
To mock the wanderitig Voice beside some haunted stream. Cuckoo-clock, 30-33. 
Such sights as youthful poets dream 
On summer eves by haunted stream. Allegro, i2g-jo. 



Intrenched your brows; ye gloried in each scar. 

But his face 
Deep scars of thunder had intrenched. 

How look'd Achilles, their dread paramount. 
The Word (Thy Paramount, mighty Nature!). 
The head and mighty paramount of truths. 
Midst came their mighty Paramount, and seem'd 
Alone the antagonist of Heaven, nor less 
Than Hell's dread Emperor. 

Through optic-glass discern. 
Through optic glass . . . views. 

Diction 



"Proud were ye. Mountains," 3 . 

P. L. i. 600-601. 

Aeneid, 138. 

"On to lona," 4-5. 

Excursion, vi. 85. 



P. L. a. 508-10. 

Grace Darling, 36. 

P. L. i. 288; cf. Hi. 590. 



The adamantine holds of truth (Prelude, v. 39) ; cf . P. L. i. 48, ii. 646, etc. 
Towers amain (Desc. Sketches, 459; also blew amain, runs amain, etc., Prelude, 

i. 334, X. 373, etc.); cf. Lycidas, in, P. L. ii. 165, 1024, etc. 
If willing audience fail not (Prelude, xi. 350), attentive audience (Excursion, iii. 

600), how win Due audience ("The Baptist might have been," 3-4); cf. P. L. 

ii. 308, v. 804, ix. 674, xii. 12. 
Begirt with silver bells (Processions, 23), temporal shapes (Prelude, viii. 496), 

battlements (Excursion, ii. 843-4); cf. P. L. i. 581, v. 868, P. R. ii. 213. 



PARALLELS — WORDSWORTH 619 

In the Qo-wer-besprent meadows (At Vallombrosa, 13), plains Besprent . . . with 

steeple-towers (Excursion, vi. 17-18); cf. Comus, 542. 
Commerce with the summer night (Desc. Sketches, 578), the sun (Eccl. Sonnets, 

III. xlvi. 13), etc.; cf. Penseroso, 39. 
Compeer (Prelude x. 199, Excursion viii. 581, ix. 431, etc.); cf. P. L. i. 127, iv. 974. 
Up-coiling, and . . . convolved (Yew-trees, 18); cf. P. L. vi. 328. 
Like a bird Darkling (Peter Bell, 344-5), darkling wren (Duddon, vii. 13), etc.; 

cf. P. L. iii. 38-9. 
With descant soft (Redbreast, 41), the descant [bird-song], and the wind ("In 

desultory walk," 10); cf. P. L. iv. 603. 
The embattled East ("O, for a kindling touch," 7), embattled House (Duddon, 

xxvii. 3), embattled hall (Eccl. Sonnets, II. vi. 6); cf. P. L. i. 129, vi. 16, etc. 
Showed hex fulgent head ("The Shepherd," 5), fulgent west (Gipsies, 14) , fulgent 

eye ("The imperial Stature," 7), fulgent spectacle (Prelude, x. 526); cf. P. L. 

X. 449. — Refulgent cars (To Enterprise, no), refulgent spectacle (Excursion, 

ix. 611); cf. P. L. vi. 527. — Bright effulgence (Vernal Ode, 11), solemn efful- 
gence ("When the soft hand," 78), etc.; cf. P. L. iii. 388, v. 458, vi. 680. 
The smooth glazings of the indulgent world (Excursion, vi. 1086); cf. P. L. iii. 

93, Comus, 161. 
A griesly sight (White Doe, 244), griesly object (Epistle to Beaumont, 130), etc.; 

cf. P. L. i. 670, ii. 704, etc. 
A God, incumbent o'er her breast (Aeneid, 88) , incumbent o'er the surface (Prelude, 

iv. 272), etc.; cf. P. L. i. 226. 
She can so inform { = form within] The mind (Tintern Abbey, i.2$-()), inform The 

mind with . . . truth (Excursion, ix. 301-2), patriots informed with Apostolic 

light (Eccl. Sonnets, III. xv. i), etc.; cf. P. L. iii. 593. 
Natural inlets of just sentiment (Prelude, Lx. 350); cf. Comus, 839. 
While jocz^nd June (Guilt and Sorrow, 413), with a, jocund voice (Michael, 299), 

jocund din (Prelude, v. 379), etc.; cf. Allegro, 94, Comus, 173, 985, etc. 
Massy (The Waggoner, 642, Peter Bell, 357, and eleven times more); cf. P. L. i. 

285, 703, etc. (nine times more). 
Ministrant To comfort (To John Wordsworth, 49-50); cf. P. L. x. 87, P. R. ii. 385. 
One oblivious winter (Primrose of the Rock, 45), amid oblivious weeds (Eccl. 

Sonnets, I. xvii. 10), oblivious tendencies (Excursion, i. 928), etc.; cf. P. L. 

i. 266. 
With oozy hair (" At early dawn," 8) ; cf . Lycidas, 175. 
With orient rays ("Weak is the will," 8), beams of orient light ("While beams of," 

i), orient gems (Excursion, iv. 568), etc.; cf. P. L. ii. 399, iii. 507, iv. 644, etc. 
A punctual presence (Prelude, viii. 610); cf. P. L. viii. 23. 
Girls — a happy rotit (Ruth, 49) , a rout . . . left Sir Walter's Hall (Hart-leap Well, 

13), a rout Of giddy Bacchanals (Three Cottage Girls, 35-6), etc.; cf. P. L. i. 

747, X. 534, etc. 
Of their approach Sagacious (Prelude, viii. 224-5); cf. P. L. x. 281. 
Sapient priests (Prelude, xi. 460), sapient Germany ("Alas, what boots," 8), 

sapient Art ("In desultory walk," 25); cf. P. L. ix. 442. 
From specular towers ("Hope smiled," 9); cf. P. R. iv. 236, P. L. xii. 588-9. 
She — a statist prudent (Vernal Ode, loi). Art thou a Statist in the van? (Poet's 

Epitaph, i), modern statists (Prelude, xiii. 72); cf. P. R. iv. 354. 
Anguish strayed from her Tartarean den (Vernal Ode, 130), Tartarean flags (Eccl. 

Sonnets, II. xxxvi. 12), Tartarean darkness (Excursion, iv. 297); cf. P. L. 

ii. 69, vii. 238. 
Celestial with terrene (Eccl. Sonnets, II. xxv. 14); cf. P. L. vi. 78. 
With umbrage wide (Evening Walk, 106), the pining umbrage (Yew-trees, 22), 

trees whose lofty umbrage (Brownie's Cell, 4), their leafy umbrage (Excursion, 

iv. 1067), etc.; cf. P. L. ix. 1087. 



620 



APPENDIX A 



The unapparent face [of Napoleon] ("Haydon! let worthier judges," 9), acknowl- 
edged tie Though unapparent ("No more," 5-6), unapparent fount (Excur- 
sion, ix. 605); cf. P. L. vii. 103. 

Some unpremeditated strains (Prelude, xiii. 353, cf. Excursion, ix. 556); cf. P. L. 
ix. 24. 

The unweeting Child (Vaudracour and Julia, 20S) , unweeting that . . . the joy ("To 
public notice," 9); cf. Comus, 539, P. L. x. 335, 916, etc. 

Push forth His arms, as swimmers use ("A little onward," 29-30); cf. Lycidas, 
67, 136, etc. 

Spread their plumy vans ("A little onward," 32), each wing a tiny van (Vernal 
Ode, 114); cf. P. R. iv. 583, P. L. ii. 927. 

In vermeil colours (White Doe, ii. 12); cf. Comus, 752. 

A viewless flight (Desc. Sketches, 69), the viewless winds (Prelude, v. 596), etc.; 
cf. Comus, 92, P. L. iii. 518, Passion, 50. 

Volant spirit (In Lombardy, 13), volant tribe ("A volant Tribe," i); cf. P. L. xi. 
S6i. 

O'er the pavement . . . Welter and flash ("Dogmatic Teachers," 11-12), if my 
spirit toss and welter (Inscriptions in Hermit's Cell, iv. 7) , waves . . . weltering, 
die away (Evening Walk, 122); cf. Nativity, 124, Lycidas, 13, P. L. i. 78. 



KEATS » 

There saw the swan his neck of arched snow, 
And oar'd himself along with majesty. 

The swan, with arched neck 
Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows 
Her state with oar y feet. 

Far different cares 
Beckon me sternly from soft "Lydian airs." 
And Lydian airs. 
And ever, against eating cares, 
Lap me in soft Lydian airs. 

To one who has been long in city pent, 
'Tis very sweet to look into the fair 
And open face of heaven. 
As one who, long in populous city pent . . . 
Forth issuing on a summer's morn to breathe 
Among the pleasant villages and farms. 

How tiptoe Night holds back her dark-grey hood. 
The grey-hooded Even. 

A mad-pursuing of the fog-born elf. 

Whose flitting lantern, through rude nettle-briar, 

Cheats us into a bog, into a fire. 

A wandering fire. 
Compact of unctuous vapour . . . 
Which oft, they say, some evil spirit attends . . . 
Misleads the amazed night-wanderer from his way 
To bogs and mires. 
And he, by friar's lantern led. 



Imitation of Spenser, 14-15. 



P. L. vii. 438-40. 

Epistle to G. F. Mathew, 17-1J 
Vulgar Superstition, 7. 

Allegro, 135-6. 



"To one who has," 1-3. 



P. L. ix. 445-8. 

Endjonion, i. 831. 
Comus, 188. 



lb. ii. 277-9 (original form). 



P. L. ix. 634-41. 
Allegro, 104. 



I These parallels (and much of the diction) were selected from those pointed out in De Selincotirt's 
edition of Keats. 



PARALLELS — KEATS 



621 



After a thousand mazes overgone. 

(A classical construction perhaps suggested 
After the Tuscan mariners transformed. 

And by her plainings drew 
Immortal tear-drops down the thunderer's beard. 
Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek. 

The unchariest muse 
To embracements warm as theirs makes coy excuse. 
Hence with denial vain and coy excuse; 
So may some gentle Muse. 

To his capable ears Silence was music. 
Not capable her ear Of what was high. 

Shell- winding Triton's bright-hair'd daughters. 
By scaly Triton's winding shell. 

And sculptures rude 
In ponderous stone, developing the mood 
Of ancient Nox; — then skeletons of man, 
Of beast, behemoth, and leviathan. 
And elephant, and eagle, and huge jaw 
Of nameless monster. 
Chaos and ancient Night. 

There leviathan, HugesL of living creatures. . . . 
Behemoth, biggest born of earth. 

Into the dungeon core of that wild wood. 

In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs. . . . 
Within the navel of this hideous wood. 

From vermeil lips. 
A vermeil-tinctured lip. 

A lover would not tread 
A cowslip on the head. 
Thus I set my printless feet 
O'er the cowslip's velvet head, 
That bends not as I tread. 

And so I kept 

Brimming the water-lily cups with tears. 

And dafadillies fill their cups with tears. 

To the silver cymbals' ring. 
In vain with cymbals' ring. 

And all his priesthood moans. 
And all their echoes mourn. 

Those winged steeds, with snorting nostrils bold 

Snuff at its faint extreme. 

Hyperion . . . still snuff 'd the incense. 

With delight he snuff' d the smell. 

Gone and past 
Are cloudy phantasms. Caverns lone, farewell 
And air of visions , and the monstrous swell 
Of visionary seas ! No, never more 
Shall airy voices cheat me to the shore. 
And thus in thousand hugest phantasies. 



lb. ii. 387. 
by 
Comus, 48.) 

lb. ii. 475-6- 
Penseroso, loy. 

lb. ii. 532-3- 

Lycidas, i8-ig. 

lb. ii. 674-5. 
P. L. via. 49-50. 

lb. ii. 691. 
Comus, 873. 



lb. iii. 131-6. 

P. L. ii. gjo; cf . g86. 

P. L. vii. 412-13, 471. 
lb. iii. 565. 

Comus, 349, 520. 

lb. iv. 148. 
Comus, 752. 



lb. iv. 167-8. 



Comus, Sgj-g. 

lb. iv. 185-6. 
Lycidas, 150. 

lb. iv. 260. 
Nativity, 208. 

lb. iv. 266. 
Lycidas, 41. 

lb. iv. 364-5. 
Hyperion, i. 166-7. 
P. L. X. 272. 



Endymion, iv. 650-4. 
Hyperion, ii. 13. 



622 



APPENDIX A 



A thousand fantasies 
Begin to throng into my memory, 
Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire, 
And airy tongues that syllable men's names 
On sands and shores and desert wildernesses. 

And the grass, therewith besprent, 
Wither'd at dew so sweet and virulent. 
Of knot-grass dew-besprent. 

Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth. 
Hid from the world in a low-delved tomb. 

Deep in forest drear. 

Of forests, and encliantments drear. 

Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn. 
Sweet is the breath of Morn. 

Am I to leave this haven of my rest. 

This cradle of my glory, this soft clime. 

This calm luxuriance of blissful light. 

These crystalline pavilions, and pure fanes? 

"Is this the region, this the soil, the clime," 

Said then the lost Archangel, "this the seat 

That we must change for Heaven ? this mournful gloom 

For thai celestial light V 

When the chill rain begins at shut of eve. 
Vanish'd unseasonably at shut of eve. 
At blushing shut of day. 
Returned at shut of evening flowers. 

Who cost her mother Tellus keener pangs. 
Which cost Ceres all that pain. 

With locks not oozy. 
His oozy locks he laves. 

Too full of joy and soft delicious warmth. 
This soft ethereal frame. 
The soft delicious air. . . . 
Their soft ethereal warmth. 

In aid soft warble from the Dorian flute. 
The Dorian mood Of flutes and soft recorders. 

(By the touch 
Of scent,) not far from roses. Turning round, 
I saw an arbour with a drooping roof 
Of trellis vines, and bells, and larger blooms. 
Like floral censers, swinging light in air; 
Before its wreathed doorway, on a mound 
Of moss, was spread a feast of summer fruits. 
Which, nearer seen, seem'd refuse of a meal 
By angel tasted or our Mother Eve; 
For empty shells were scatter'd on the grass. 
And grape-stalks but half bare, and remnants more. 
Sweet-smelling, whose pure kinds I could not know. . . . 
Among the fragrant husks and berries crush'd 

Upon the grass. Fall of Hyperion, i. 23-34, 52-3. 

(A reference to P. L. v. 298-395; note particularly, 



Comus, 205-g. 

Lamia, i. 148-9. 
Comus, 542. 

Nightingale, 12. 
Fair Infant, js. 

Robin Hood, 18. 
Penseroso, iig. 

Hyperion, i. 2. 
P. L. iv. 641. 



lb. i. 235-8. 



P. L. i. 242-5. 

lb. ii. 36. 

"The day is gone," 5. 

Lamia, ii. 107. 

P. L. ix. 278. 

Hj^ierion, ii. 54. 
P. L. iv. 2fi. 

lb. ii. 170. 
Lycidas, 175. 

lb. ii. 266. 
Lamia, ii. 89 (rejected reading). 

P. L. ii. 400, 601. ^ 

Hyperion, iii. 12./ 
P. L. i. 550-1. 



PARALLELS — KEATS 



623 



Fruil of all kinds, in coat 
Rough or smooth-rined , or bearded husk, or shell . . . 
. ... the grape . . . many a berry . . . then strews the ground 
With rose and odours from the shrub unfumed. . . . 

. ... So to the sylvan lodge 

They came, that like Pomona's arbour smiled. 

With flowerets deck'd and fragrant smells. . . . 

.... Raised of grassy turf 

Their table was, and mossy seats had round. . . . 



The embossed roof, the silent massy range 

Of columns. 

And love the high embowed roof, 

With antic pillars massy proof. 

A power within me of enormous ken, 

To see as a god sees. 

At once, as far as Angels ken, he views. 

Which marries sweet sound with the grace of form. 
Lap me in soft Lydian airs 
Married to immortal verse. 

Mortal, that thou mayst understand aright, 
I humanize my sayings to thine ear, 
Making comparisons of earthly things. 

And what surmounts the reach 
Of human sense I shall delineate so, 
By likening spiritual to corporal forms , 
As may express them best. 

When winds are all wist. 
The winds, with wonder ivhist. 

As the fabled fair Hesperian tree, 
Bearing a fruit more precious! 
But Beauty, like the fair Hesperian tree 
Laden with blooming gold. 

Trees . . . whose fruit, burnish' d with golden rind. 
Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true. 

As if Night's chariot- wheels 
Were clogg'd in some thick cloud ? O, changeful Love, 
Let not her steeds with drowsy-footed pace. 
Till an unusual stop of sudden silence 
Gave respite to the drowsy-flighted steeds 
That draw the litter of close-curtain' d Sleep. 

Nods, becks, and hints. 

Nods and Becks, and wreathed Smiles. 

In midmost Ind, beside Hydaspes cool. . • . 
To Pigmio, of Imaus sovereign. 

As when a vulture on Imaus bred . . . 
Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams. 

Of faeries stooping on their wings sublime. 

Or in the air sublime, 
Upon the wing or in swift race contend. 
He on the wings of Cherub rode sublime. 



P. L. V. 341-9, 377-9, 391-2. 

lb. i. 83-4. 
Penseroso, 157-8. 

lb. i. 303-4. ^^ 
P.L.i.59.^ ^ 

lb. i. 443- 
Allegro, 136-7. 

lb. ii. 1-3. 

P. L. V. 571-4- 

Song of Four Fairies, 98. 

Nativity, 64. 

Otho the Great, IV. i. 82-3. 
Comus, 393-4- 
P. L. iv. 248-50. 

lb. ii. 31-3. 

Comus, 552-4. 

lb. V. iv. 32. 

Allegro, 28. 

Cap and Bells, i, 29. 

P. L. Hi. 431-6. 
lb. 98. 

P. L. ii. 528-9. 
P. L. vi. 771. 



1 This is not given by Mr. De Selincourt. 



624 APPENDIX A 

Let the sweet mountain nymph thy favourite be, 

With England's happiness proclaim Europa's Liberty. On Peace, 8-9. 

The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty. Allegro, 36. 

Diction 

I admire how crystal-smooth it felt (Endymion, iii. 383); cf. P. L. i. 690, ii. 677, 

etc. 
To sit upon an Alp (" Happy is England," 7) , upon that alp (End. i. 666) ; cf . P. L. 

ii. 620. 
Feel amain (End. ii. 12; also gazed amain, drive amain, etc.. Lamia, ii. 151, Cap 

and Bells, xxv. 9, etc.); cf. Lycidas, iii, P. L. ii. 165, 1024, etc. 
I see, astonied, that (Hyperion, ii. 165); cf. P. L. ix. 890. 
Begirt with ministring looks (End. i. 150); cf. P. L. i. 581, v. 868, P. R. ii. 213. 
The whole maramoih-brood (of the Titans, Hyp. i. 164); cf. P. L. i. 5x0-11, 576, 

Samson, 1247. 
Arcs, and broad-belting colure (Hyp. i. 274); cf. P. L. ix. 66. 
Sly compeers (Cap and Bells, x. 7); cf. P. L. i. 127, iv. 974. 
Curtain'd canopies (End. ii. 618), fragrant-c«ftozw'(i fove ("The day is gone," 7); 

cf. Nativity, 230, Comus, 554. 
A darkling way (Eve of St. Agnes, xl. 4), darkling I listen (Nightingale, 51); cf, 

P. L. iii. 39. 
Knowledge enormous (Hyp. iii. 113); cf. P. L. v. 297. 
My eternal essence ( = myself, Hj^). i. 232) , that puny essence ( = Jove, ib. ii. 331) ; 

cf. P. L. i. 138, 425, ii. 215, iii. 6, ix. 166, etc. 
Faded eyes (Hyp. i. 90); cf. P. L. i. 602. 
Trees Fledge the . . . mountains (Ode to Psyche, 54-5), a jledgy sea-bird choir 

(Staffa, 41), the swan ... on htr jledgy breast (Otho, II. ii. 102); cf. P. L. iii. 

627, vii. 420. 
Eye of gordian snake (End. iii. 494), she [the snake] was a gordian shape (Lamia, i. 

47); cf . P. L. iv. 347-8. 
I gratulate you (Otho, I. i. 55); cf. Comus, 949, P. R. iv. 438. 
Through . . . gricsly gapes (End. ii. 629); cf. P. L. i. 670, ii. 704, etc. 
Honied wings (End. ii. 997); cf. Penseroso, 142. Of bees in each case. 
That inlet to severe magnificence (Hyp. i. 211); cf. Comus, 839. 
The monstrous sea (= peopled with monsters. End. iii. 69); cf. Lycidas, 158. 
Thunder . . . Rumbles reluctant (Hyp. i. 60-61); cf. P. L. vi. 58, and Keats's note 

on it (De Selincourt's ed., p. 497). 
Of sciential brain (Lamia, i. 191); cf. P. L. ix. 837. 
Who 'sdains to yield to any (King Stephen, iii. 41), he 'sdeigned the swine-head 

(Stanzas on Brown, ii. 4); cf. P. L. iv. 50. 
The slope side of a suburb hill (Lamia, ii. 26), came slope upon the threshold of the 

west (Hyp. i. 204); cf. Comus, 98, P. L. iv. 261, 591. 
Sovran voices (Hyp. iii. 115), her sovran shrine (Melancholy, iii. 6); cf. P. L. i. 

246, 753, etc. 
Turn'd, syllabling thus (Lamia, i. 244); cf. Comus, 208. 
Herself, high-thoughted (Lamia, ii. 115), turn, so\t-thoughted, to one Lady (Eve of 

St. Agnes, v. 6), ont-thoughted . . . love ("I cry your mercy," 3); cf. 

Comus, 6. 



APPENDIX B 

POEMS IN NON-MILTONIC BLANK VERSE' 

1667-1750 

1680 Roscommon, Earl of. Horace's Art of Poetry, made English, 1680. 

1692 Fletcher, Thomas. Translations of parts of books ii-iv of the Aeneid 

(Poems on Several Occasions, 1692, pp. 120-^2); Christ born, a pastoral 
(ib. 133-8). 

1697-8 Pope, Walter. The wish (1697); Moral and political fables, done into 
measured prose, etc. (1698). 

1701-13W. Watts, Isaac. A sight of Christ (Horae Lyricae, 1706, pp. 65-9); To 
Robert Atwood (ib. 146-52); To Sarissa (ib., 1709, pp. 174-8); True 
monarchy (ib. 188-90); True courage (ib. 191-3); Thoughts and medita- 
tions in a long sickness (Reliquiae Juveniles, 1734, pp. 172-83). 

1702 Talbot, G. On the vision, etc., a dialogue. — Prefixed to Matthew Smith's 

Vision, 1702. 

1702-18 Dennis, John. The monument, a poem to William III (Select Works, 1718, 
i. 81-145); Battel of Ramellies (ib. 219-329); On the accession of King 
George (ib. 330-353); three translations, from the Bible and the Iliad 
(ib. ii. 468-71). 

1706 D'Urfey, Thomas. Loyalty's glory. — Stories, Moral and Comical, 1706, 

pp. 217-57. 

1706 w. 1715 p. Grove, Henry. To Dr. Watts. —Works, 1747, iv. 391-2. 

1708-11 Anon. [Short passages in] British Apollo, 1708-11, vol. i, nos. 50, 54, 
and supernumerary paper no. 7 (two pieces); vol. ii, nos. 11, 15, 18, 22, 
25, 39, 49, 53, 74, 76, 83, 92, 108, 114, 115, and supernumerary paper 
no. 8 (two pieces); vol. iii, nos. 5, 13, 15, 18, 30, 55, 61; vol. iv, no. 5. 

1713^ Anon. Joseph's discovery of himself to his brethren, imitated from Grotius. 

—Tate's Entire Set of the Monitors, 1713, vol. i, no. 8. 
Anon. Upon the crucifiction of our blessed Saviour.— Ib., no. 15, with a 
supplement in no. 17. 

1716 MoNCK, Mary. [Translations from Delia Casa, Marini, and Tasso.] — 

Marinda, 1716, pp. 87, 89, 91, 97-107, 132-3. 

1718 Hinchlipfe, William. To Sylvia, an epistle (Poems Amorous, Moral, and 

Divine, 1718, pp. 69-71); Upon Newton's Mathematical Principles, 
translated from Halley (ib. 17 1-7). 

1719 Richardson, Jonathan. [A translation from Dante, and a short original 

piece, in Discourse on the Dignity, etc., of the Science of a Connoisseur.] 
—Works, new ed., 1792, pp. 184-6, 229. 

1720 Anon. On Homer.— Mist's Weekly Journal, no. 105, pp. 625-6 (Dec. 3, 

1720). 
bef. 1721 w. Prior, Matthew. A prophecy. — Dialogues of the Dead, etc., ed. A. R. 

Waller, Camb., 1907, p. 318. 
1725? w. Armstrong, John. Imitations of Shakespeare: [Winter], Progne's dream, 

A storm. — Miscellanies, 1770, i. 147-63. 
1726 Thomson, James. [A short translation from Virgil's Georgics.]— Winter, 

2d ed., 1726, preface, pp. 17-18. 

* For form and abbreviations, see the last paragraph on page 636 below. 

s An American poem of this date is Richard Steere's Earths Felicities, Heavens Allowances, a Blank 
Poem (in The Daniel Catcher, Boston, 1713, pp. 55-73). 

62s 



626 APPENDIX B 

bef. 1729? Carey, Henry. The cypress-grove. — Poems on Several Occasions, 3d ed., 
1729, pp. 118-19. 

1729 Anon. Timon and Fla via.— Miscellaneous Poems, ed. James Ralph, 1729, 

pp. 43-52. 
Anon. The courtier.- lb. 73-9. 
Anon. The lunatick.— lb. 115-25. 
Anon. Part of the third chapter of Job paraphras'd.— lb. 208-11. 

1729-39 RowE, Elizabeth. To the unknown God, in Letters Moral and Enter- 
taining, 1729 (Works, 1796, i. 94-6); many short unnamed fragments 
(ib. 84-s, 93, loi, 104-5, 126, 220, 269, 300-1, ii. 30, 54-5, no, and, "by 
another hand," i. 168, 176-7); parts of Pastor Fido translated (ib. iii. 
160-62); Devout soliloquies, in blank verse (ib. 195-245); Paraphrase 
on Canticles, in blank verse (ib. 245-59). 

1732 Anon. The happy savage. — Gent. Mag., ii. 718. 

1739 Browne, Moses. The power and presence of God: a version of Psalm 

139. — Poems on Various Subjects, 1739, pp. 447-50. 

c. 1740 w. 1849-84 p. Gray, Thomas. Dante, canto 33, dell' Inferno.- Works, ed. 
Gosse, 1884, i. 157-60. 

1742 Anon. The muse's complaint to Strephon. — Scots Mag., iv. 166. 

Winstanley, JOEtN. An address to the sepulchre of Prince George.— 
Poems, Dublin, 1742, pp. 69-71. 

c. 1742 w. Warton, Joseph. The dying Indian.— Biographical Memoirs, ed. Wooll, 
1806, pp. 156-7. 

bef. 1745 w. Warton, Thomas (the elder). A pastoral on the death of Bion, from 
Moschus.— Poems, 1748, pp. 197-208. 

1746 Hill, Aaron. Free thoughts upon faith (Works, 2d ed., 1754, iv. 217-42); 

Cleon to Lycidas, a time-piece (ib. 285-308). See also examples of vari- 
ous passions (joy, fear, etc.) in his "Essay on the Art of Acting" (ib. 

377-84)- 

1746 w. 1777 p. Anon. (Miss A. Crosfield?). A description of the Castle hills, near 

Northallerton. — Town and Country Mag., ix. 605-6. 

1747 Anon. An brutum sit machina?— Dodsley's Museum, 1747, iii. 380-84. 

1748 WiNGFiELD, Richard. To peace. — Gratulatio Academiae Cantab rigiensis 

de Reditu . . . Georgii II, Camb., 1748, sign. B. 
1750 Stillingfleet, Benjamin. Some thoughts occasioned by the late earth- 

quakes, 1750. 



APPENDIX C 

LOCO-DESCRIPTIVE POEMS NOT KNOWN 
TO BE MILTONICi 

A. HILL-POEMS 

1642 Denham, John. Coopers hill, 1642. 

1697 Manning, Francis. Greenwich-hill, 1697. 

171 1 w. MoNCK, Mary. Moccoli [a villa on a hill near Florence].— Marinda, 1716, 
pp. 141-56. 

1735 '^' Hardinge, Nicholas. [Two poems on Knoll Hills.] —J.Nichols's Illustra- 
tions of Literary History, 1817, i. 650-55. 

1745 Barpord, Richard. Knowls hill, in Essex, 1745. Not seen. 

1746 w. 1777 p. Anon. (Miss A. Crosfield?) A description of the Castle hills, 

near Northallerton. — Town and Country Mag., ix. 605-6. (Blank 
verse.) 

1747 Rich, E. P. Stinch comb-hill, or the prospect, 1747. 

1754 BowDEN, Samuel. A description of Chedder-cliffs and Mendip-hills. — 

Poems, Bath, 1754, pp. 54-60. 

1755 Duck, Stephen. Caesar's camp, or St. George's hill, 1755. 

1759 FoRTESCUE, James. Castle hill [two poems].— In Dissertations, Essays, 

etc., 1759. Not seen. 
1769 Lyttelton, George, Lord. Mount Edgecumbe. — Poetical Works, 1801, 

pp. II 8-19. (Octosyllabics.) 
c. 1770 w. 1777 p. RoscoE, William. Mount Pleasant. —Poetical Works, 1857, pp. 

I-I7- 
1774 Anon. St. Thomas's mount, written by a gentleman in India, 2 cantos, 

1774.— See Mo. Rev., i. 311-12. 
Mercer, Thomas. Arthur's seat. — Poems, Edin., 1774, pp. 1-41. (Octo- 
syllabics.) 
Pye, H. J. Faringdon hill, 2 books, Oxford, 1774. 
1777 * Anon. The prospect from Malvern-hill, 1777. — See Crit. Rev., xliv. 475-7. 

Be.avan, Edward. Box-hill, 1777. — See ib., xliii. 158; no extract. 
Crawford, Charles. Richmond-hill. — Poems on Various Subjects, 3d 

ed., 1810, pp. 1-29. 
Hurn, W. Heath-hill, 1777. — See Crit. Rev., xliii. 233; no extract. 
Jordan, John. Welcombe hills, 1777. Not seen. 
P., T. (Thomas Pye?). Witenham-hill, 1777? — Gent. Mag., xlviii. 129. 
1781 MiCKLE, W. J. Almada hill, an epistle from Lisbon, Oxford, 1781. 

1784 N., T. One tree hill [Greenwich].— Univ. Mag., Ixxiv. 266-7. (Octo- 

syllabics.) 

1785 Hobhouse, Thomas. Kingsweston hill, 1785. 
Yearsley, Ann. Clifton hill. — Poems, 1785, pp. 107-27. 

1788 Cotter, G. S. Prospects, a descriptive poem, 4 books.— In Poems, Cork, 

1788. Not seen. 

1789 Rusher, Philip. Crouch-hiU, Banbury, 1789. Not seen. 

' Unless otherwise designated, the poems are in heroic couplets. "No extract" means that no part of' 
the poem appears in the review cited. A few unimportant loco-descriptive poems that show the influ- 
ence of Milton but are not mentioned in Chapter XII above aie listed in Bibliography I, under the years 
176s, 1767, 178s, 1828, 1828 w., 1832, 1846, and Bibliography II, 1750, 1760, 1802. 

2 1777. Astle, Daniel. A prospect from Barrow-hill, in Staflfordshire, Birmingham, 1777. — See 
Mo. Rev., Iviii. 308-9. (Prose.) 

627 



628 APPENDIX C 

1794* Anon. Llangunnor hill, a loco-descriptive poem, 1794. — See Mo. Rev., enl., 

xvi. 460-62. (Octosyllabics.) 

1794? BiDLAKE, John. Written at Mount Edgcumbe.— In Poems, 1794?; re- 

printed in W. H. K. Wright's West-Country Poets, 1896, pp. 38-40. 
(Octosyllabics.) 

1796 Davis, T. Eastham hill, a loco-descriptive poem, Monmouth, 1796. 

Not seen. 

1797 Mackay, J. Quebec hill, or Canadian scenery, 2 parts, 1797. — See Mo. 

Rev. , enl. , xxiv. 210-12. 

1798 Bo\VLES,W. L. St. Michael's mount, Salisbury, 1798. 

1799 Maurice, Thomas. Grove-hill, 1799. 

1800 Cunningham, Peter. St. Anne's hill, 3d ed., Chertsey, 1833. (Elegiac 

stanzas.) 

1803 Shoel, Thomas. MileshiU [St. Michael's mount], 1803. Not seen. 

1804 WooDLEY, George. Mount-Edgcumbe, Devonport, 1804. Not seen. 

1807 Maurice, Thomas. Richmond hill, 1807. — See Mo. Rev., enl., Iv. 132-8. 

1808 Skurray, Francis. Bidcombe hill, 1808. Not seen. 

181 1 Hogg, Thomas. St. Michael's mount, 4 cantos, 1811. 

Redding, Cyrus. Mount Edgcumbe, 1 811. — See Wright's West-Country 

Poets, 1896, p. 397. 
Tucker, W. J. Honiton-hill, Bath, 1811. — See ib. 457-8. 

181 2 Penticross, William. Witenham-hill, 181 2. Not seen; may be the one 

noted under 1777 above. 
1817 Yeatman,H. F. Brent knoll, Sherborne, 1817. Not seen. 

1821 Thelwall, John. Shooter's hiU. — Poetical Recreations, 1822, pp. 232-4. 

(Elegiac stanzas.) 

B. OTHER POEMS 

1679 w. 1745 p. Anon. Belvoir: a Pindaric ode upon Belvoir castle.— J. Nichols's 
History of Leicestershire, 1795, vol. ii, pt. i, app., 50-61. (Pindarics.) 

1693 Lewis, . Relation of a journey to Tunb ridge Wells, with a description 

of the wells, 1693. Not seen. 

1706 Harrison, William. Woodstock park. — Dodsley's Miscellany, 1758, v. 

188-201. 

1708 Anon. Windsor-castle, 1708. 

1712 Goldwin, William. A poetical description of Bristol, 171 2. Not seen. 

1 7 13 Pope, Alexander. Windsor forest, 17 13. 

1715 Anon. The country seat, a description of Langdon, near Plymouth, 1715. 

Not seen. 
1 718 Anon. Greenwich park, etc., inscribed to the duke of Montagu, 17 18. 

Not seen. 
Jones, Samuel. Whitby, 1718. Not seen. 
bef.i723p. Ward, James. Phoenix park.— Miscellaneous Poems, pubUshed by Mr. 

Concanen, 1724, pp. 379-91. 
1724 Amory, Thomas. A poem in the praises of Taunton, 1724. Not seen. 

1726 Howard, Leonard. Greenwich park. — Poetical Works, n.d., pp. 28-60. 

1727 Anon. Description of Tunbridge, 1727. Not seen. 

1727 w. Peck, Francis. Belvoir castle.— J. Nichols's History of Leicestershire, 

1795, vol. ii, pt. i, app., 61-6. 
1731-8 BoYSE, Samuel. Loch Rian (Chalmers's English Poets, 1810, xiv. 533-4); 

The triumphs of nature (ib. 534-8); Nature (ib. 567-8); Retirement 

(ib. 576-9). The last three poems describe the parks at Stowe, Dalkeith, 

and Yester. 

1 The American poems, Greenfield Hill by Timothy Dwight (N. Y., 1794) , Beacon Bill by S. W. Morton 
(Boston, 1797), and Milton Eillhy H. M. Lisle (Boston, 1803), may also be noticed. 



NON-MILTONIC DESCRIPTIONS 629 

1732 Anon. Verses occasioned by seeing the palace, park, etc., of Dalkeith, 

Edin .,1732. Not seen . 
1732-3 Aram, Peter. Studley-park.— Thomas Gent's History of Rippon, York, 
1733, PP- 1-28. 

1733 DtncK, John. Scarborough, 1733. Not seen; may be the poem in Gent. 

Mag., iv. 155-6. 

1734 Chandler, Mary. A description of Bath, 7th ed., 1755. 

1739 Browne, Moses. A view of Scarborough, in four epistles.— Poems, 1739, 

pp. 205-26. 

1747 Anon. Shrewsbury quarry, in imitation of Pope's Windsor-forest, Salop, 

1747. (Not the same as under 1770 below.) 

1748 Anon. Bath, 1748. Not seen. 

1749 Anon. Bristol Wells, a poem for the year 1749, by a gentleman at the 

Wells, Bristol, 1749. Not seen. 
Jones, Henry. Rath-Farnham. — Poems, 1749, pp. 44-50- 
1749 w. Browne, Moses. Percy-lodge, seat of the duke of Somerset, 1755.— See 

Mo. Rev., xiv. 60-61. (Octosyllabics.) 
1750? Anon. A description of Bath, i75o(?). Not seen. 

Anon. Killarney, by an officer in the army, Dublin, 1750(7) . Not seen. 
1753 Khjdell, Henry. Tiverton, 1753. — See Mo. Rev., x. 78; no extract. 

1755 Dalton, John. A descriptive poem [on the mines near Whitehaven], 1755. 

Maxwell, Archibald. Portsmouth, 2 books, 1755. — See Mo. Rev., xiii. 
297; no extract. 
c-T-755yf. Langhorne, John. Studley park. — Chalmers's English Poets, 1810, xvi. 

416-19. 
1758 HucKELL, John. Avon, 3 parts, Birmingham, 1758. 

Potter, Robert. Holkham, 1758. 

1760 Madden, W. B. Belle Isle, 1760. — See Crit. Rev., xi. 416; no extract. 

1 761 Williams, William. An essay on Halifax, a poem in blank verse, Halifax, 

1 761. Not seen. 

1763 Nichols, John. Islington, 1763. — See Crit. Rev., xvi. 316. 
RiTSO, George. Kew gardens, 1763. — See ib. 394-5. 

1764 Wilson, John. The Clyde, 1764. — See John Veitch's Feeling for Nature 

in Scottish Poetry, 1887, ii. 179-82. 
Woodhouse, James. The Lessowes. — Poems on Sundry Occasions, 1764, 
pp. 38-109. 

1765 Anon. Kimbol ton-park, 1765. — See Mo. Rev., xxxiii. 240. 

1766 Jones, Henry. Vectis, the isle of Wight, 3 cantos, 1766. — See ib. xxxiv. 

349-51- 
MicHELL, Richard. Hackwood-park, 1766. — See Crit. Rev., xxi. 318. 

1 767 Anon. The rise and progress of the present taste in planting parks, pleasure- 

grounds, etc., 1767 [treats of Kew, Kensington, and Stowe]. —See Mo. 
Rev.,xxxvii. 139-44. 
JoKTES, Henry. Clifton, 2 cantos, Bristol, 1767. Not seen. 

1769 Anon. The prospect, a lyric essay, by Martin Scriblerus, jun., 1769. — See 

Crit. Rev., xxvii. 397. (Lines of eight and nine syllables, with alternate 
rime.) 
Ogilvie , John . Paradise ,1769. 

1770 Jones, Henry. Shrewsbury quarry, etc., Shrewsbury, 1770. 

1771 Maude, Thomas. Wensleydale, or rural contemplations, 1771. 
Sheridan, R. B. The Bath picture, a ballad, 1771. Not seen. 

1772 Leslie, John. Killarney (Dublin, 1772); Phoenix park (1772, see Crit. 

Rev., XXXV. 158, no extract). 

1773 Anon. A description of Tunbridge.— Univ. Mag., lii. 266-7. 

1773 w. Hill, Robert. Greenwich -park.— Poems on Several Occasions, i775> 
pp. 161-88. 



630 APPENDIX C 

1774 Ellis, George. Bath, its beauties and amusements, Bath, 1774. Not seen. 

1775 Anon. Bath and it's environs, 3 cantos, Bath, 1775. 

1776 Maurice, Thomas. Netherby (Oxford, 1776); Hagley (Oxford, 1776). 
Mltndy, F. N. C. Needwood forest, Lichfield, 1776. — See Stebbing Shaw's 

History of Staffordshire, 1798, i. 68-70, second pagination. (Octosyl- 
labics.) 
Reeve, Joseph. Ugbrooke park, 1776.-866 Wright's West-Country 
Poets, 1896, p. 398. 

1777 HuNTiNGFORD, Thomas. Nun's path [near Warminster], a descriptive 

poem, pt. I, Salisbury, 1777. Not seen. 

1778 Heard, William. A sentimental journey to Bath, Bristol, and their en- 

virons, a descriptive poem, 1778. Not seen. 

1779 w. Walters, Daniel. Landough, a loco-descriptive poem.— John Walters's 

Poems, Oxford, 1780, pp. 135-42. 

1782 Maltde, Thomas. Verbeia, or Wharfdale, York, 1782.-866 Crit. Rev., 

Iv. 257-60. 

1783 Davies, Edward. Blaise castle, a prospective poem, Bristol, 1783. Not 

seen. 
1784? Thomas, Ann. Shetland.— Probably in Poems, 1784: see Wright's West- 

Country Poets, 1896, p. 437. 

1785 Hadwen, W. Rusland. — Univ. Mag., Ixxvii. 152-3. 

1786 Anon. Matlock, a farewell descriptive poem, 1786. — See Mo. Rev., bcxv. 

313; no extract. 
Cowley, Hannah. The Scottish village, 1786. (Alternate rime.) 
Rhodes, T. Dunstan park, or an evening walk, 1786. — See Crit. Rev., Ixi. 

234; no extract. 
1787-9 Mavor, William. Blenheim (1787); A new description of Blenheim (1789, 

not seen). 

1788 Anon. Chatsworth, 1788. -See Crit. Rev., Ixvi. 488-9. 

Whalley, T. S. Mont Blanc, an irregular lyric poem, 1788.-866 Gent. 
Mag.,lviii. 146-7, 329-30. (Pindarics.) 

1789 Fernyhough, William. Trentham park, 1789.-866 Mo. Rev., enl., i. 

336; no extract. 
Walker, John. A descriptive poem of the town and trade of Liverpool, 

Liverpool, 1789. Not seen. 
1789 w. 1803 p. Woodhouse, James. Norbury park.— Life and Works, 1896,11. 163- 

77. 
1792 Anon. Stonehenge, 1792. Not seen. 

1792 w. Sotheby, William. Llangollen.— Tour through Parts of Wales, 1794, 

pp. 103-120. 

1793 Anon. Devon water.- The Bee, xv. 249 (June 19, 1793). 
Anon. The south downs, 1793.-866 Mo. Rev., enl., xii. 166-9. 
Cumberland, George. A poem on the landscapes of Great Britain, 1793. 

— See ib. 221-2. 
Hampson, William. Duckinfield lodge, 2 cantos, 1793.-866 Crit. Rev., 
newarr.,xi. 347. 

1794 Lacy, Willoughby. The garden of Isleworth, 1794.-866 ib. xiii. 354; 

no extract. 

1796 DoiG, David. Extracts from a poem on the prospect from Stirling castle, 

1796. — See ib. xviii. 461-2. 
Seward, Anna. Llangollen vale (Llangollen Vale, with other Poems, 1796, 
pp. i-ii, stanzas); Verses on Wre.xham (ib. 12-14); Hoyle lake (ib. 
15-21, elegiac stanzas) . 

1797 GiSBORNE, John. The vales of Wever, a loco-descriptive poem, 1797.— 

See Mo. Rev., enl., x.xiv. 430-35. (Octosyllabics.) 



NON-MILTONIC DESCRIPTIONS 63 1 

1798 Atkinson, Joseph. KUlarney, 1798.-866 ib. xxv. 472; no extract. 

HoLFORD, Margaret. Gresford vak, 1798.-866 ib. 476. (Alternate 
rime.) 

1800 BisSET, James. A poetic survey round Birmingham, 1800. — 86e ib. xxxiii. 

319-20. 

1801 Anon. The vale of Trent, 1801. — See ib. xxxv. iio-iii; no extract. 
1803 White, Henry Kirke. Clifton grove. — Remains, sth ed., i8ii,ii. 11-28. 
1806 Mxjnnings, J. 8. Cromer, a descriptive poem in blank verse, part i, 1806. 

Not seen. 
Taprell, Richard. Barnstaple, 1806. — 8ee Wright's West-Country Poets, 
1896, pp. 434-5. (Blank verse.) 
1808 8ansom, James. Greenwich, a poem descriptive and historical, 1808. Not 

seen. 

1810 Freeman, Rowland. Regulbium, a poem, with an historical and descrip- 

tive account of the Roman station at Reculver, Canterbury, 1810. 

Not seen. 
Kennedy, James. Glenochel, a descriptive poem, Glasgow, 1810. Not seen. 
Smedley, Edward. Erin, a geographical and descriptive poem, 1810. Not 

seen. 

1811 Drximmond, W. H. The giants' causeway, 3 books, Belfast, 181 1. 
Ireland, W. H. C. A poetic epistolary description of the city of York, 

York, 1811. Not seen. 

1812 Bryson, W. a. Sun-rise at Lough Erne (Poems, Dublin, 1812, pp. 90-1); 

Moon-light scene at Killarney (ib. 92-4). Hendecasyllabics, with al- 
ternate rime. 
1814 Morgan, William. Long Ashton, a poem, in two parts, descriptive of the 

scenery of that village, etc., Bristol, 1814. Not seen. 

1817 Anon. Tunbridge Wells, a descriptive poem, 181 7. Not seen. 
1817-21 Croly, George. Paris in 1815, 2 parts, 1817-21. (Spenserian stanzas.) 

1818 Shoel, Thomas. Glastonbury Tor, Sherborne, 1818. Not seen. 
1819-20 Woodley, George. Cornubia [Cornwall], 5 cantos, 1819; Devonia [Devon] , 

5 cantos, 1820. Not seen. 

1820 w. 1826-36 p. Polwhele, Richard. Dartmoor. — Reminiscences, 1836, iii. 63-84. 

1821 Hemans, Felicia D. Dartmoor, 1821. 

1823 Cottle, Joseph. Dartmoor, etc., 1823. Not seen. 

1828 Hoyle, Charles. Killarney. — In his Three Days at Killarney, etc., 

1828. Not seen. 



APPENDIX D 

RIMED TECHNICAL TREATISES 

This is a list of poems that tell how to make or do something. It 
does not include translations of well-known classical works, or humorous 
poems that are technical in name only, such as The Art of Tickhng- 
Trouts (anon., 1708); William King's Art of Cookery (1708); John 
Gay's Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London (17 16), and 
Receipt for Stewing Veal (written 1726); The Art of Decyphering 
(anon., 1727); Horace's Art of Poetry Spiritualiz'd, or the Art of Priest- 
craft (anon., 1727?); William Dunkin's Art of Gate-passing, or the Mur- 
phaeid (1730) and Receipt for making a Doctor (written before 1765); 
James Miller's Harlequin Horace, or the Art of Modern Poetry (1731); 
Poeticorum Liber, a New Art of Poetry (anon., 1732); James Ralph's(?) 
Art of War (1740, Champion, i. 297-8); Thomas Tickell's Fragment on 
Hunting (written before 1740); A Receipt to make a Lord (anon., 
quoted from Common Sense in Horace Walpole's letter to Horace Mann, 
about July i, 1742); A Recipe for an Asthma (anon., 1744, Norfolk 
Poetical Miscellany, i. 350-53); William Woty's Recipe to make a Man 
of Consequence (Shrubs of Parnassus, 1760, p. 145); William Upton's 
Dramatic Advice, or a Receipt for a New Play (Poems, 1788, pp. 50-52); 
C. V. Le Grice's Estianomy, or the Art of Stirring a Fire (in his 
Tineum, 1794); John Anstey's ("John Surrebutter's") Pleader's Guide 
(2 books, 1796); Joseph Fawcett's Art of Poetry (1797); G. S. Carey's 
Art of Imitation (Mo. Mirror, 1797, iv. 236-7); The Art of making Tea 
(anon., 1799); John Henham's Receipt to write Blank Verse (Mo. Mag., 
1803, xvi. 339-40); John Taylor's Art of Acting (1827). Four other 
poems that I have not seen sound like genuine technical treatises, but 
may be humorous: Isaac Hallam's Cocker, or approv'd Rules for Breed- 
ing Game Fowl (1746), The Art of Preserving (anon., 1759), C. Grierson's 
Art of Printing (Dublin, 1764), Henry Jones's Inoculation, or Beauty's 
Triumph (Bath, 1768). 

1673 Evelyn, John (the younger). Of gardens, translated from Rapin, 1673. 

(Also translated by James Gardiner, 1706.) Not seen. 

1682 Buckingham, Duke of. An essay upon poetry, 1682. 

1683 SoAMES, William. The art of poetry, translated from Boileau, 1683. 

1684 Roscommon, Earl of. An essay on translated verse, 1684. 

1686 Chamberlayne, John. A treasure of health, translated from Castor 

Durante, 1686. Not seen. 
Tate, Nahltm. Syphilis, translated from Fracastoro.— Appended to Dry- 
den's Miscellany, 1693 , part iii. 

633 



RIMED TECHNICAL TREATISES 633 

1697 Anon. The innocent epicure, or the art of angling, 1697.^ 

1700 Hopkins, Charles. The art of love, 2 books, 1700.^ 

1704 Anon. A receipt to make an oat-meal pudding.— Dryden's Miscellany, 

1704, V. 315. 
Anon. A receipt to make a sack-posset.— lb. 316. 

1710 RowE, Nicholas. Paedotrophiae, or the art of bringing up children, 

from Sainte-Marthe, 17 10. (Also translated by H. W. Tytler in 1797.) 
RowE, Nicholas, and others. Callipaediae, or an art how to have hand- 
some children, translated from Quillet, 17 10. (Also translated anony- 
mously in 1710, by W. Oldisworth in 17 19, anonymously as Advice to 
New-married Persons in 1754, and as The Joys of Hymen, or the Conju- 
gal Directory, in 1768.) 

1 711 Pope, Alexander. An essay on criticism, 1711. 
1713 Gay, John. Rural sports, 1713. 

King, William. Apple-pye (Original Works, 1726, iii. 259-61); Hasty 
pudding (ib. 262). 
1717 Breval, J. D. DE. The art of dress, 1717. 

1719 B.,J. The art of beauty, 1719. Not seen. 

1722 Diaper, William, and Jones, John. Oppian's Halieuticks, of the nature 

of fishes and fishing, Oxford, 1722. 

1723 Anon. Silk worms, translated from Vida, 1723. (Also translated by S. 

PuUein, 1750.) Not seen. 
1725-51 Pitt, Christopher. Vida's Art of Poetry, translated, 1725 (Chalmers's 
English Poets, 1810, xLx. 633-51); Fragments of a rhapsody on the art 
of preaching, in imitation of some parts of Horace's Art of Poetry, 1751 
(Poems, 1756, pp. 20-25). 

1727 Markland, Abraham. Pteryplegia, or the art of shooting-flying, 1727. 

1728 Anon. (John Laurence?). Paradice regain'd, or the art of gardening, 

1728. 

1729 Bramston, James. The art of politicks, in imitation of Horace's Art of 

Poetry, 1729. 
Jenyns, SoAME. The art of dancing, 1729. 
1735-8 DoDSLEY, Robert. Beauty, or the art of charming, 1735; The art of 
preaching, in imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry, 1738. 

1736 Mawer, John. [First book of] Oppian's Cynegeticks, York, 1736. 
1736-54 Jeffreys, George. Vida's Chess, translated; Vaniere's Country Farm, 

books i, xiii, translated.— Miscellanies, 1754, pp. 137-63, 163-230. (Book 
xiv of Vaniere, on bees, was translated by Arthur Murphy in 1799, and 
book XV, on fish, by John Duncombe in 1809.) 

1737 Green, Matthew. The spleen, 1737. 
Stillingfleet, Benjamin. An essay on conversation, 1737. 

1738 Miller, James. Of politeness, 2d ed., 1738. 

1740 Dinsd ALE, Joshua. The modern art of breeding bees, 1740. Not seen. 

1 741 Anon. Theartof poetry, i 741. (Not a translation from Boileau or Horace.) 

1742 Anon. The art of architecture, in imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry, 

1742. 

1746 Hill, Aaron. The art of acting.— Works, 2d ed., 1754, iii. 387-408. 

1747 Lennox, Charlotte. The art of coquettry. — Poems on Several Occasions, 

1747, PP- 61-7. 

1748 Tripe, Andrew. The small-pox, canto i, 1748. Not seen. 
1753 Francklin, Thomas. Translation, 1753. 

1 The anonymous Art of Angling, in W. Ruddiman's Collection of Scarce Pieces (Edin., 1773, pp. 26Q- 
334) . gives no directions for fishing. 

' This is not a translation of Ovid, though it imitates him at times. 



634 APPENDIX D 

^755 CooTE, Robert. The compleat marksman, or the true art of shooting fly- 

ing, 1755. — See Scots Mag., xviii. 205-6. (Not the same as under 1727 
above.) 
D ALTON, John. Some thoughts on building and planting.— A Descriptive 
Poem addressed to Two Ladies, 1755, pp. 29-35. 

1758 Moore, Anthony. An essay on the art of preaching, 1758. — See Mo. Rev., 

xix. 585-6. 

1759 Marriott, Thomas. Female conduct, an essay on the art of pleasing, 2 

books, 1759. 
1763 Elphinston, James. Education, 4 books, 1763. — See Mo. Rev., xxviii. 

103-8. 

1763 w. 1772 p. Jones, Sir William. Caissa,or the game at chess. —Works, 1807, x. 

301-16. 

1764 Anon. The cestus of Venus, or the art of charming, 1764.-566 Mo. Rev., 

XXX. 68-9. 

1767 Anon. The rise and progress of the present taste in planting parks, etc., 

1767. — See ib. xxxvii. 139-44. 
Langhorne, John. Precepts of conjugal happiness, 1767. 

1768 Smith, James. The art of living in London, 2 cantos, 1768. 
1770 Pratt, Ellis. The art of dressing the hair, Bath, 1770. 

1777 Anon. The art of conversing, translated from Pere Andre of Rouen, 1777. 

— See Mo. Rev. , Ivi. 480. 
1778-84 Pye, H. J. The art of war, translated from Frederick the Great, 6 books, 

1778; Shooting, 1784. 
1783 Mason, William. Dufresnoy's Art of Painting, translated, York, 1783. 

(Dryden had translated it into prose in 1695.) 
1785 Graham, Charles. On the arts of penmanship and engraving.— Univ. 

Mag.,lxxvii. 38. 
1789 Anon. The garden, or the art of laying out grounds, translated from Abbe 

de Lille, 1789. — See Mo. Rev., enl., v. 154-6. (Also translated by Mrs. 

Montolieu, 1798.) 
1791 Thomson, Alexander. Whist, 12 cantos, 1791. 

1794 Knight, R. P. The landscape, 3 books, 1794. 

1796 Cooke, William. Conversation, 3 parts, 1796. — See Mo. Rev., enl., xxi. 

111-12. 
1798 Anon. Phthisiologia, a poem [on medicine] miscellaneously descriptive and 

didactical, 4 parts, 1798.— See Crit. Rev., new arr., xxvii. 96-7. 
1810 Seward, Anna. Receipt for a sweet jar. — Poetical Works, Edin., 1810, 

i. 110-12. 
1816 Anon. Vis medicatrix, a didactic poem, Bath, 1816. Not seen. 

1819 Lathy, T. P. The angler, 10 cantos, 1819. 



BIBLIOGRAPHIES 



636 BIBLIOGRAPHIES 

The following bibliographies are based primarily on an examination of 
every volume of English literature written between the middle of the 
seventeenth and nineteenth centuries which the Harvard Library pos- 
sesses. A number of books not at Harvard I saw in the Boston libraries and 
the principal collections of England arid Scotland. Several years later the 
Ust thus obtained was corrected and all the poems in it were re-examined 
to see if they continued to impress me as Miltonic. Numerous additions 
have been made from year to year, and the entire list has been verified by 
Miss Rowe. 

There is no pretence to completeness, for if it were possible to go 
through the stacks of the British Museum as I went through those at 
Harvard many more titles would be added. Almost all such additions 
would, however, be works of slight importance, and, unless a considerable 
number of them belonged to the first half of the eighteenth century, they 
would probably give little information that cannot be deduced or con- 
jectured from the present lists. It was for this reason that my systematic 
examination of the Harvard shelves stopped short of the Victorian age, 
and of 1806 in the case of magazines. I felt that additional titles of minor 
pieces written long after the Miltonic movement had passed its zenith 
would increase the bulk rather than the value of the book. 

The bibliographies are not meant to include every poem showing 
any influence from Milton; pieces which merely borrow a few words or 
phrases, or which use the Miltonic style only in one or two short passages, 
are intentionally omitted. Of course there are many cases in which it is 
hard to draw the line, particularly in the work of men like Wordsworth 
and Southey, some of whose pieces certainly belong here while others 
almost certainly do not. I have leaned to the conservative side and have 
rejected many poems that others have called Miltonic. It should also be 
noticed that the fourth bibliography is not limited to Miltonic sonnets, 
and that it includes only those by authors who wrote sonnets before i8cx) 
and published some in books. 

In order that the growth of Milton's influence may easily be traced, the 
arrangement has been made chronological, but the scattered poems of an 
author can be brought together through the index. The undesignated date 
is that of publication. When the date of writing is known to be more than 
one or two years earher than that of publication, it is given (marked " w.") 
followed by the earliest date of publication that I could find (marked 
"p."), unless this is the date of the volume cited. Titles have been con- 
densed, and after the first occurrence in each bibliography the editor's 
name and the place of publication have been omitted. When the place of 
issue is London, as is usually the case, it has not been mentioned. The 
references are in every instance to the editions I have used. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY I 

POEMS INFLUENCED BY PARADISE LOST^ 

1685 Roscommon, Earl of. An essay on translated verse, 2d ed., 1685. 

1695 Blackmore, Sir Richard. Prince Arthur, an heroick poem, 10 books, 1695. 

Dennis, John. The court of death, a pindarique poem, 1695. 

1697 Blackmore, Sir Richard. King Arthur, an heroick poem, 12 books, 1697. 

1698 w. Say, Samuel. Epistles of Horace [four]. — Poems on Several Occasions, 

1745, PP- 1-26. 

1 701 • Philips, John. Imitation of Milton [the Splendid Shilling]. — A New Mis- 

cellany of Poems, ed. Charles Gildon, 1701, pp. 212-21. 

1702 Anon. The vision.— Examen Miscellaneum [ed. Gildon?], 1702, pp. 44-64. 
Smith, Matthew. The vision, or a prospect of death, heav'n and hell, 1702. 

1703 Blackmore, Sir Richard. A hymn to the light of the world. — Collection 

of Poems, 1718, pp. 385-409. 
1703-23 w. 1709-31 p. Trapp, Joseph. The works of Virgil, 2d ed., 3 vols., 1735. 

1704 Addison, Joseph. Milton's style imitated, in a translation out of the third 

Aeneid.— Works, Bohn ed., 1890, i. 38-41. 
Dennis, John. Britannia triumphans, or a poem on the battel of Blenheim. 

— Select Works, 1718, i. 147-218. 
[Translations from Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, in] Grounds of criti- 
cism in poetry.— lb. ii. 436, 448-50. 
1704? RowE, Elizabeth. A description of hell, in imitation of Milton.— Works, 

1739, i- 49-52. 
On heaven.— lb. 52-5. 

1705 Blackmore, Sir Richard. Eliza, an epick poem, 10 books, 1705. 
Philips, John. Bleinheim, 1705. 

1705-6 Defoe, Daniel. Lines.— A Review of the Affairs of France, 1705, vol. i, 
supplement no. 5. 
— — A hymn to truth.— lb., vol. ii, no. i. 
On the fight at Ramellies.— lb., vol. iii (1706), no. 61. 

1706 Anon. Ramelies.— A. Harrach's John Philips, Kreuznach, 1906, pp. 111-21. 
Dennis, John. The battle of Ramillia, 5 books, 1706. 

Paris, Mr. RamiUies, in imitation of Milton, 1706. 
Philips, John. Cerealia, an imitation of Milton, 1706. 
1706 w. 1 71 5 p. Standen, Joseph. To Dr. Watts, on his Horae Lyricae.— Isaac 

Watts's Works, 1810, iv. 419-21. 
1708 Gay, John. Wine, 1709. 

Philips, John. Cyder, 2 books, 1708. 
1708 w. RowE, Thomas. Horace, book i, ode xii, imitated.— Original Poems, etc., 
1738, appended to Miscellaneous Works of Elizabeth Rowe, 1739, ii. 
245-8. 
1708-11 Anon. [Short passages in] British Apollo, 1708-11, vol. i. nos. 50, 56, 
78, 90, 99, loi, 105, 108, III, quarterly paper no. i, and supernumerary 
paper no. 8 (two pieces); vol. ii, nos. 3, 9 (two pieces), 14, 18, 19, 31, 55, 
60, 61, 72, 90, 96, 104, 107, and supernumerary papers nos. 3, 4; vol. iii, 
nos. 17, 23, 127. 

' All the poems in this bibliography are in blank verse, except those by Blackmore (i6qs, 1697, 1703, 
1705), Dennis (1695), Smith (1702), Burges (1801), Pahner (1802), Cottle fiSis), and Wordsworth (1822), 
all but a few lines of Roscommon (1685), and parts of the anonymous Vision (1702), of Fellows (1770), 
Thomson (1796), and Mrs. Flowerdew (1803). 

637 



638 



BIBLIOGRAPHY I 



1709 Bellamy, Daniel (the elder). Taffy's triumph, or a new translation of the 

Cambro-muo-machia, in imitation of Milton, 1709. 
Grove, Henry. A thought on death.— Works, 1747, iv. 395. 
"Philo-Milton." Milton's sublimity asserted, in a poem occasion'd by a 

late celebrated piece, entituled Cyder, 1709. 
Prior, Matthew. The first hymn of Callimachus: to Jupiter. — Poems on 

Several Occasions, ed. Waller, Camb. , 1905, pp. 196-9. 
Watts, Isaac. The celebrated victory of the Poles over Osman.— Horae 
Lyricae, 1709, pp. 229-38. 

To Mitio.— lb. 261-79. 

An elegiac thought on Mrs. Anne Warner.— lb. 304-8. 

bef.i7io?w. RowE, Elizabeth. Part of the thirteenth book of Tasso's Jerusalem, 

translated.— Works, 1739, i. 147-50. 
1711W. 1724P. Needler, Henry. [Poem proving the existence of God from the 
works of creation.]— Works, 2d ed., 1728, pp. 135-9. 

To the memory of Favonia.— lb. 198-200. 

1 712 Fenton, Elijah. Part of the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah, paraphras'd.— 

Poems on Several Occasions, 171 7, pp. 37-40. 

1713 Finch, Anne, Countess of Winchilsea. Fanscomb Barn, in imitation of 

Milton.— Miscellany Poems, 1713, pp. 58-65. 
1713W. 1724 p. Thomson, James. The works and wonders of almighty power.— 

Complete Poetical Works, ed. J. L. Robertson, 1908, pp. 483-4. 
1713-26 Brady, Nicolas. Virgil's Aeneis, 4 vols, in one, 1716-26. 

1714 Anon. Prae-existence, in imitation of Milton, 1714. 

1715 Anon. The mouse-trap, done from the Latin in Milton's stile, 1715. 

1 71 7 Fenton, Elijah. The eleventh book of Homer's Odyssey, in Milton's style. 

— Poems on Several Occasions, 1717, pp. 85-127. 
c. 1718 w. 1847 P- Thomson, James. Lisy's parting with her cat.— Works, 1908, pp. 

511-13- 
1 7 19* Peck, Francis. Sighs upon the death of Queen Anne, in imitation of 

Milton, 1719. 

1720 "A Gentleman of Trinity-College in Cambridge." An occasional 

poem. — Reasons for Abolishing Ceremony, by J. Swift, Jr., 1720, pp. 
20-25. 
1720? Anon. (J. Bulkeley?). The last day, book i, 17 2o(?). 
bef.1721 w. Prior, Matthew. Virgils Georgic 4 verse 511, translated.— Dialogues of 
the Dead, etc., ed. Waller, Camb., 1907, p. 334. 
Prelude to a tale from Boccace.— lb. 339-44. 

1 721 Anon. A description, in imitation of Milton.— Miscellaneous Collection of 

Poems, publish'd by T. M. Gent, Dublin, 1721, ii. 54-8. 
Prior, Matthew. The second hymn of Callimachus: to Apollo. — Poems 
on Several Occasions, ed. Waller, 1905, pp. 200-204. 
1721 w. 1793 p. Mallet, David. The transfiguration, in imitation of Milton's style.— 
Europ. Mag., xxv. 52. 

1723 Baker, Henry. An invocation of health, 1723. 

Newcomb, Thomas. The last judgment of men and angels, after the man- 
ner of Milton, 12 books, 1723. 

1724 Brown, N. The north-country wedding.— Miscellaneous Poems, published 

by Matthew Concanen, 1724, pp. 1-15. 

The fire. — lb. 16-21. 

Warburton, William. Pygmaio-geranomachia, or the battle of the cranes 

and pigmies, in imitation of Milton's style. — Tracts by Warburton, etc. 

[ed. Samuel Parr], 1789, pp. 56-62. 

' bef. 1719 Anon. A description of the four last things, viz. death, judgment, hell, and heaven, in 
blank verse, 2 pts., 2d ed., 1719. Not seen. 



POEMS INFLUENCED BY PARADISE LOST 639 

1725 Anon. To Miss M-reton, in Milton's stile.— A New Miscellany of Poetry, 

from Bath, Tunbridge, etc., 1725, pp. 50-51. 

1726 Anon. A verbal translation of part of the first Aeneid.— Miscellaneous 

Poems, published by D. Lewis, 1726, pp. 307-9. 
Thompson, William. A poetical paraphrase on part of the book of Job, 
in imitation of the style of Milton, 1726. 
1726-30 Thomson, James. The seasons, 4 parts, 1730. 

1727 Broome, William. Part of the tenth book of the Iliads of Homer, in the 

stile of Milton. — Poems on Several Occasions, 2d ed., 1739, pp. 101-30. 

From the eleventh book of the Iliads of Homer, in the stile of 

Milton. -lb. 176-84. 

Harte, Walter. Psalm the civth, paraphrased. — Poems on Several Occa- 
sions, 1727, pp. 229-34. 

Psalm the cviith, paraphrased. — lb. 235-42. 

Pitt, Christopher. The 139th psalm paraphras'd in Miltonick verse.— 
Poems and Translations, 1727, pp. 120-27. 

Ralph, James. The tempest, or the terrors of death, 1727. 

SoMERViLE, William. Hudibras and Milton reconciled.— Occasional 
Poems, Translations, etc., 1727, pp. 93-6. 

Thomson, James. To the memory of Sir Isaac Newton.— Works, 1908, 
pp. 436-42. 

1728 CuRTEis, Thomas. Eirenodia. — R. Freeman's Kentish Poets, Canterbury, 

i82i,ii. 121-46. 
Glover, Richard. A poem on Sir Isaac Newton. — Prefixed to Henry 

Pemberton's View of Newton's Philosophy, 1728. 
Lyttelton, George, Lord. Blenheim. — Poetical Works, 1801, pp. 26-33. 
Mallet, David. The e.xcursion, 2 books, 1728. 
Ralph, James. Night, 4 books, 1728. 

Sawney, an heroic poem occasion'd by the Dunciad, 1728. 

bef. 1729? Carey, Henry. To Handel. — Poems on Several Occasions, 3d ed., 1729, 

pp. 108-9. 
1729^ Anon. The loss of liberty, or fall of Rome, 1729. 

Browne, Moses. To George Dodington.— Piscatory Eclogues, 1729, 

dedication. 
Ralph, James. Zeuma, or the love of liberty, 3 books, 1729. 
Thomson, James. (?) To the memory of Mr. Congreve.— Works, 1908, pp. 
457-62. 

Britannia.— lb. 471-80. 

1730-42 w. Blair, Robert. The grave, 1743. 

C.1730-65W.DUNKIN, William. The poetical mirror, 4 books. — Select Poetical Works, 
Dublin, 1769-70, i. 100-337. 

The frosty winters of Ireland in 1739, 1740.— lb. 430-43. 

Notes to the Parson's Revels.— lb. ii., sign, b 4. 

Translation from Boetius.— lb. 518-20. 

1731 Anon. Isaiah, chap. Ix.— A Miscellany of Poems, ed. J. Husbands, Oxford, 

1731, pp. 1-8. 
Anon. An epistle from Oxon.— lb. 121-8. 

Anon. To , on the death of J. Hill.— lb. 134-40. 

Anon. A hymn to the Creator. — lb. 141-5. 

Anon. From Oxford, to a friend.— lb. 155-60. 

Anon. II penseroso.— lb. 161-9. 

Anon. Job, chap, the 3d. — lb. 184-9. 

Anon. The country.— lb. 197-208. 

Anon. A divine rhapsody, or morning hymn.— lb. 255-62. 

> 1729 Anon. TheadventuresofTelemachus, attempted in blank verse, books i-ii, 1729. Not seen. 



640 



BIBLIOGRAPHY I 



1731 Anon. An evening hymn. — lb. 266-70. 

Anon. On Albanio's marrying the incomparable Monissa; in Miltonian 
verse.— New Miscellaneous Poems, 7th ed., 1731, pp. 180-88. 

Anon. A paraphrase on the civth psalm, in imitation of Milton's style.— 
The Flower-Piece, 1731, pp. 205-g. 

B , J . The templer's bill of complaint.— lb. 119-29. 

1732 ^ Anon. A panegyrick on cuckoldom.— Lond. Mag., i. 202. 

Laxjder, William. A poem (Eucharistia) of H. Grotius on the holy sacra- 
ment, translated, Edin., 1732. 

1732 w. Wogan, Charles. The psalms of David, paraphrased in Miltonic verse.— 

See Swift's Correspondence, ed. F. E. Ball, 1913, iv. 327-31 (Swift to 
Wogan, Aug. 2, 1732). 

1733 Anon. Prize verses, no. xi: On her majesty and the bustoes in the royal 

grotto. — Gent. Mag. , iii. 541. 
Lloyd, John. The blanket, in imitation of Milton, 1733.— See the Bee, 

iii. 1181 (Aug., 1733). 
Long, Roger. "When o'er the sounding main to Belgia's coast."— 

Gratulatio Academiae Cantabrigiensis . . . Annae Georgii II . . . Filiae 

. . . Nuptias celebrantis, Camb., 1733, pp. [3-6]. 

1734 Anon. Darius's feast, or the force of truth, 1734. 

C, E. Gin, in Miltonick verse.- Lond. Mag., iii. 663. 
Thomson, James. To Dr. De la Cour, in Ireland, on his "Prospect of 
Poetry."— Works, Aldine ed., 1847, i- 69-72. 
i734~6 Liberty, 5 parts.— Works, 1908, pp. 309-421. 

1735 Browne, Isaac Hawkins. Imitation iii.— A Pipe of Tobacco, in Imitation 

of Six Several Authors, 1736, pp. 13-15. 
Lilly, William. Psalm 8, in Miltonick verse.— Lond. Mag., iv. 683-4. 
SoMERViLE, William. The chace, 1735. 

1736 Anon. The Christian hero.- Gent. Mag., vi. 343-7. 
Armstrong, John. The oeconomy of love, 1736. 

"AsTROPinL." To Mr. Thomson on his excellent poems.— Gent. Mag., 

vi. 479. 
"Endymion." An astronomical pariadox.— lb. 159-60. 

Solution of the astronomical paradox.— lb. 283. 

Wesley, Samuel (the younger). The dog, a Miltonick fragment. — Poems 

on Several Occasions, 1736, pp. 148-50. 
The descriptive, a Miltonick, after the manner of the moderns.— 

lb. 151-6. 

1737 Akenside, Mark. The poet. — Poetical Works, Aldine ed., 1835, pp. 282-7. 
Anon. Albania, a poem addressed to the genius of Scotland. — Scottish 

Poetry of the Eighteenth Century, ed. G. Eyre-Todd, Glasgow, 1896, i. 

82-6. 
D., M. Animal oeconomy. — Gent. Mag., vii. 246. 
Glover, Richard. Leonidas, 1737. 
Thomson, James. To the memory of Lord Talbot.— Works, 1908, pp. 

444-55- 

1737 w. 1749 p. HoADLY, John. Kambromyomachia, or the mouse-trap.— A Collection 

of Poems by Several Hands [Dodsley's Miscellany], 1758, v. 258-68. 

1738 Anon. A hymn to the morning, attempted in Miltonic verse.— Lond. Mag., 

vii. 44. 

A hymn to night, attempted in the same verse.— lb. 44. 

Anon. Written by a gentleman, a little inclin'd to melancholy.— lb. 198-9. 
Anon. An enigma.— lb. 408-9. 

I 1732 LocKUAN, John. [Voltaire's] Henriade, an epick poem, in ten cantos, translated into blank 
verse, 1732. Not seen. 



POEMS INFLUENCED BY PARADISE LOST 641 

1738 Anon. Verses wrote when smoaking some bad tobacco. — Gent. Mag., viii. 

99-100. 
"Britannicus." The voice of liberty, a poem in Miltonic verse, occa- 

sion'd by the insults of the Spaniards, 1738. 
"EuGENio." A hymn to the Creator of the world.— Lond. Mag., vii. 

509-10. 
"A Freshman of Clare-Hall." An elegy on the death of her majesty.— 

lb. 253. 
Price, Henry. To Mr. [Moses] Browne. — Gent. Mag., viii. 651. 
Shipley, Jonathan. On the death of Queen Caroline.- John Nichols's 

Select Collection of Poems, 1782, viii. 109-11. 

1738 w. Edwards, Samuel. The Copernican system. — Poetical Calendar, ed. 

Fawkes and Woty, 1763, iii. 67-77. 

1739 Anon. On the declaration of war against Spain. — Gent. Mag., ix. 596-7. 
Barton, Richard. Fairy fort, or the pleasures of an acre. — Farrago, 1739, 

pp. 1-25. _ 

The wicked man's reflections. — lb. 1 19-21. 

Browne, Moses. To Mr. Thomson. — Poems on Various Subjects, 1739, 

pp. 266-8. 
Glover, Richard. London, or the progress of commerce, 1739. 

1739 w. Davies, Sneyd. Vacuna.— John Whaley's Collection of Poems, 1745, pp. 

178-81. 

Epithalamium.— lb. 242-5. 

1739-67 Strahan, Alexander. The Aeneid, translated, 2 vols., 1767. — See Mo. 
Rev., ix. i-ii, xxxvii. 321-3. 

1740 Anon. Liberty regain'd, in imitation of Milton, 1740. 

Anon. On the resurrection, in imitation of Milton.— Appended to Francis 

Peck's New Memoirs of Milton, 1740. 
Dyer, John. The ruins of Rome, 1740. 

King, William. Milton's epistle to Pollio, from the Latin, 1740. 
Newcomb, Thomas. Part of Psalm cxlviii, after the manner of Milton.— 

Miscellaneous Collection of Poems, 1740, pp. 339-42. 
Parker, Benjamin. Money, in imitation of Milton.— See A. Boyer's 

Litterary State of Great-Britain for 1740 (appended to his Political 

State, etc.), p. 25. 
Ralph, James. (?) An essay on truth.— The Champion, 1741, ii. 63-70. 
SoMERViLE, William. Hobbinol, or the rural games, a burlesque, 1740. 
c. 1740? w. Davies, Sneyd. Rhapsody, to Milton.— J. Whaley's Collection, 1745, 

pp. 182-6. 

On J. W. ranging pamphlets.— lb. 202-7. 

To the Hon. and Rev. [Frederick Cornwallis].— lb. 208-13. 

A song of Deborah.- lb. 217-24. 

The nativity. — lb. 225-8. 

1740 w. 1744 p. Warton, Joseph. The enthusiast, or the lover of nature. — Biographi- 

cal Memoirs, etc., ed. J. WooU, 1806, pp. 11 1-24. 

1741 Anon. The country christning, from a Latin poem.— Lond. Mag., x. 44-5. 

1742 1 SoMERViLE, William. Field sports, 1742. 

Winstanley, John. An address from a youth his to father. — Poems, 

Dublin, 1742, pp. 283-6. 
1742-6 Young, Edward. The complaint, or night thoughts, 9 parts. — Poetical 

Works, Aldine ed., 1852, vol. i. 
bef. 1743 w. Say, Samuel. Fragment.- J. Nichols's Collection, 1780, vi. 43. 

1 bef. 1742 w. HiNCEn,iFFE, William. [Translation of Telemachns, books i-ix, in manuscript.] In 
blank verse: Gibber's Lives, 1753, v. 23. Not seen. 



642 



BIBLIOGRAPHY I 



1743 Bramston, James. The crooked sixpence, 1743. 

1743 w. 1778 p. Brooke, Henry. Conrade. — Poetical Works, 3d ed., Dublin, 1792, 

iv. 391-414. 

1744 Akenside, Mark. The pleasures of imagination, 3 books, 1744. 

Anon. Wrote at Ocriculum in Italy.— John Wesley's Collection of Moral 
and Sacred Poems, Bristol, 1744, ii. 191-3. 

Armstrong, John. The art of preserving health, 1744. 

Price, Henry. On the loss of the victory.— Lond. Mag., xiii. 565. 
1744? w. Davies, Sneyd. To N. Hardinge.— Nichols's Illustrations, 1817, i. 647-50. 
bef. 1 745 w. Warton, Thomas (the elder). To Baptista Turriano, from Fracastorius. 
— Poems on Several Occasions, 1748, pp. 76-91. 

The song of Judith.— lb. 122-7. 

A paraphrase on the xiiith chapter of Isaiah.— lb. 209-12. 

A farewell to poetry.— lb. 219-22. 

1745 ^ Anon. The Sunday-peasant, Dublin, 1745. 

Cooper, John Gilbert. The power of harmony, 2 books. — Poems on 

Several Subjects, 1764, pp. 79-120. 
Davies, Sneyd. To C[harles| P[ratt], Esq.— J. Whaley's Collection, 1745, 

pp. 236-9. 

A night thought.— lb. 240-41. 

To the Rev. T[imothy] T[homas], D.D.-Ib. 328-35. 

Hobson, Thomas. Christianity, the light of the moral world, 1745. 

Thompson, William. Sickness, 1745.^ 

Warton, Thomas (the younger).? Five pastoral eclogues, 1745. 

1745 w. Gibbons, Thomas. A poem on the rebellion in 1745.— Juvenilia, 1750, 

pp. 244-59. 
Young, Edward. Reflections on the public situation of the kingdom.— 
Works, 1852,11. 199-216. 
c. 1745 w. Cumberland, Richard. [Translation from Virgil's third Georgic.] — 
Memoirs, 1807, i. 83-7. 

1746 Anon. A Bacchanalian rhapsody. —The Museum, or Literary and His- 

torical Register [Dodsley's Museum], 1746, i. 336-9. 
Anon. Advice to the fair sex.— lb. ii. 223-4. 

Anon. The nocturnal excursion of fancy. — Gent. Mag., xvi. 102-3. 
"Tom Sober." Small-beer.— lb. 553. 

1746 w. 1758 p. Akenside, Mark. Hymn to the naiads.— Works, 1835, pp. 239-56. 

1747 Anon. Pleasures of the night.— Lond. Mag., xvi. 239-40. 

Mallet, David. Amyntor and Theodora, or the hermit, 3 cantos, 1747. 

R., R. The jealous lover's excuse.— Lond. Mag., xvi. 45. 

S., G. Description of paradise, from Masenius. — Gent. Mag., xvii. 242. 

Stephens, Edward. The dying heathen.— Miscellaneous Poems, Ciren- 
cester, 1747, pp. 43-5. 

Universal praise. —lb. 45-50. 

Warton, Thomas (the younger). The pleasures of melancholy. — Poetical 
Works, ed. Mant, Oxford, 1802, i. 68-95. 

1748 Anon. An inscription.— Dodsley's Miscellany, 1748, iii. 202. 
Anon. Marriage. — Scots. Mag., x. 78-82. 

Anon. The t d. —Gent. Mag., xviii. 135. 

Anon. Verses from the Jacobite Journal.— lb. 135. 

Hamilton, William, of Bangour. The flowers. — Poems and Songs, ed. 
J. Paterson, Edin., 1850, pp. 75-6. 

1 I74S Anon. War, a poem in blank verse, 1745. Not seen. 

' Thompson later removed two long passages from this work and printed them, as Coresus and Callirhoe 
and On Mr. Pope's Works, in his Poems on Several Occasions, Oxford, 1757, i. 85-102, 122-31. 



POEMS INFLUENCED BY PARADISE LOST 643 

1 748 Hamilton, William, of Bangour. Speech of Randolph [book ii of his MS. 

poemThe Bruce].— lb. 105-11. 

Doves.— lb. 112. 

L., H. Paraphrase of the first psalm.— Univ. Mag., iii. 223. 

Leapor, Mary. The fields of melancholy and chearfulness.— Poems upon 

Several Occasions, 1748, pp. 145-53. 
"A Scholar of Winchester School." Poverty, in imitation of Mr. 

Philips's Splendid Shilling. - Gent. Mag., xviii. 88. 
Shiells, Robert. Marriage, 1748. 
Taperell, John. Revenge. — Poems on Several Occasions, 2d ed., 1750, 

pp. 71-6. 

1748 w. 1803 p. CowpER, William. Verses on finding the heel of a shoe. — Poems, 

ed. J. C. Bailey, 1905, pp. 1-2. 

1749 Anon. A hymn to the Author of the new year. — Scots Mag., xi. 20. 
Anon. Panegyrick on a louse, in the stile of Milton.— Lond. Mag., xviii. 

474- 

Anon. Adam banish'd [translation of Grotius's Adamus Exul, act i].— 
Gent. Mag., xix, 67-9. 

Browne, Moses. Sunday thoughts. — See R. Freeman's Kentish Poets, 
Canterbury, 1821, ii. 168-75. 

Hawkesworth, John. God is love. — Gent. Mag., xix. 467. 

Jones, Henry. To Doctor Green. — Poems, 1749, pp. 20-22. 

To a friend on his marriage. — lb. 134-6. 

Rolt, Richard. Cambria, 3 books, 2d ed., 1749. 

A poem to Sir W. W. Wynne, 1749. 

WiLKS, Rev. Mr. The departure of a Christian; in Miltonic verse.— New- 
castle General Mag., 1749, p. loi. 

1750 Anon. The empty purse, a poem in Miltonics, 1750. 
Anon. A rhapsody. — Scots Mag., xii. 264-5. 

Free, John. Stigand, or the Antigallican, in Miltonic verse, 1750. 

Gibbons, Thomas. On the death of several young acquaintance. — Juve- 
nilia, 1750, pp. 146-8. 

A morning-thought.— lb. 148-50. 

The distress and relief.— lb. 153-6. 

An elegiac poem, to Isaac Watts.— lb. 173-98. 

Psalm xxix.— lb. 218-21. 

The plague of locusts: Joel, chap, ii.— lb. 234-7. 

On the earthquake.— lb. 238-41. 

"Philalethes." Pandaemonium, inscrib'd to William Lauder, 1750. — ■ 

Smart, Christopher. On the eternity of the Supreme Being.— Cambridge 
Prize Poems, 1 750-1806, Camb. 181 7, i. 1-7. 

Warton, Thomas (the younger). A panegyric on Oxford ale.— Works, 
i8o2,ii. 181-8. 
1750? Arnold, Cornelius. Distress. — Poems on Several Occasions, 1757, pp. 

139-49- 
c. 1750 w. Brown, John, D. D. Fragment of a rhapsody, written at the lakes in 

Westmoreland.— Richard Cumberland's Odes, 1776, p. 5. 
c. 1750W. 1760 p. Hamilton, William, of Bangour. The parting of Hector and Andro- 
mache, from the Iliad. — Poems and Songs, 1850, pp. 165-7. 

First scene of the Philoctetes of Sophocles.— lb. 171-2. 

1751 Anon. II meditante.— Lond. Mag., xx. 603-4, xxi. 84-5. 

Anon. Wisdom, 1751. 
Arnold, Cornelius. Commerce, 1751. 
"Clericus." The song of Deborah paraphrased.— The Student, Oxford, 

1751,"- 33-7- 
DoDD, William. A day in vacation at college, a burlesque, 1751. 



644 



BIBLIOGRAPHY I 



1751 Draper, W.H. The morning walk, 175 1. 

* Parsons, Phil. "Pensive and sad beneath the secret shade." — Academiae 
Cantabrigiensis Luctus in Obitum Frederici . . . Walliae Principis, 
Camb., i75i,Q2, verso. 

HiNCHLiPFE, John. "If e'er the Muse could paint excess of woe." — 
Ib.V. 

Carter, Gilbert. "Enthron'd imperial on her gilded carr."— lb. Cc, 
verso. 

Sharp, J. "Why doth Britannia, clad in sable weed."— lb. LI2, verso. 

Long, Roger. "Yes, I will weep for thy untimely fate."— lb. Pp. 

Smart, Christopher. On the immensity of the Supreme Being. — Cam- 
bridge Prize Poems, i. 9-14. 

Stephens, Edward. A poem on a violent storm, 1751. 

Stormont, David, Lord Viscount. On Prince Frederick's death. —Nichols's 
Collection, 1782, viii. 195-9. 

Whitehead, William. Hymn to the nymph of Bristol spring, 1751. 

1751 w. Harris, James. Concord.— Poetical Calendar, 1763, xii. 53-9. 

1752 1 Anon. Life. — Escapes of a Poetical Genius, 1752, pp. 34-41. 

Death. -lb. 42-8. 

Anon. The noctuary, or an address from the tombs, 1752. 

"Fantom." Solitude. — Scots Mag., xiv. 500. 

Smart, Christopher. On the omniscience of the Supreme Being. — Cam- 
bridge Prize Poems, i. 15-22. 

The hop-garden, a georgic, 2 books. — Poems on Several Occasions, 

1752, pp. 101-35. 

1753 ^ DoDSLEY, Robert. Public virtue, 3 books: i, Agriculture, 3 cantos, 1753. 

1753 w. Smart, Christopher. On the power of the Supreme Being. — Cambridge 

Prize Poems, i. 23-8. 
1754 ' Anon. Ode on the death of Mr. Pelham, 1754. — See Scots Mag., xvi. 159. 

Anon. The triumph of death, 1754. 
Blacklock, Thomas. Elegy: To the memory of Constantia. — Poeps, 3d 

ed., 1756, pp. 144-52. 

A soliloquy. — lb. 153-67. 

FoRTESCUE, James. Pomery-hill, 1754. — See Gent. Mag., xxiv. 245. 
Grey, Richard. Of the immortality of the soul, translated from I. H. 

Browne, 1754. 
Miller, John. An idea of God, from Racine's Esther. — Poems on Several 

Occasions, 1754, pp. 206-7. 

On love, a Miltonic essay.— lb. 208-12. 

Philips, John. (?) The fall of Chloe's piss-pot.— Lond. Mag., xxiii. 85-6. 
Weekes, Nathaniel. Barbados, 1754. — See Mo. Rev., xi. 325-9. 
Wills, James. De arte graphica, or the art of painting, translated from 

Dufresnoy, [2d ed.], 1765. 

1754 w. Bally, George. On the justice of the Supreme Being. — Cambridge Prize 

Poems, i. 29-45. 
DoDSLEY, Robert. Verses on arrival at the Leasowes. — Shenstone's 
Works, 1764, ii. 380-82. 

* For convenience of reference, the titles in books which have signature letters instead of pagination 
are arranged as they occur in the volumes, and only the leaf on which the poem begins is indicated. 
1 1752 Anon. Grace, 1752. In blank verse: Mo. Rev., vi. 240. Not seen. 

^ 1753 Anon. The vindication, or day-thoughts, occasioned by The Complaint, or Night-thoughts, 
1753. In blank verse: ib. ix. 235-6. Not seen. 
Harrod, William. Sevenoke, 1753. In blank verse: ib. viii. 392. Not seen. 
' 1754 Jones, Henry. The relief, or day-thoughts, occasioned by The Complaint, or Night- 
thoughts, 1754: see ib. x. 304. Not seen; may be in blank verse. 



POEMS INFLUENCED BY PARADISE LOST 645 

1755! Anon. From a clergyman to his friend. — Gent. Mag., xxv. 326. 

Anon. On a late most terrible calamity.— Lond. Mag., xxiv. 624-5. 
Anon. Religious conscience, in imitation of Young's Night Thoughts, 

1755. — See Mo. Rev., xii. 509-10. 

Daniel, . Clackshugh, in Miltonic verse, 1755. 

Scott, J. N. An essay towards a translation of Homer, i7S5.-See Mo. 

Rev. , xii. 355-70. 
1755? CoMBERBACH, RoGER. Translation of an ode of Horace.— The Contest, 

1755 (?) : see Mo. Rev., xiii. 95-9. 
[An "eclogue," or letter in verse to John Byrom.]— Byrom's Remains, 

ed. R. Parkinson, Chetham Soc, 1857, ii. 555-7- 
1755 w. Emily, Charles. The praises of Isis.— A Collection of Poems by Several 

Hands [Pearch's Supplement to Dodsley], new ed., 1783, i. 26-38. 
Jemmat, Catharine. On the recovery of Lord Molesworth.- Miscellanies, 

1771, pp. 19-20. 
Keate, George. Ancient and modern Rome, 1760. 
Smart, Christopher. On the goodness of the Supreme Being. — Cambridge 

Prize Poems, i. 47-52. 

1755 w. 1785 p. LoviBOND, Edward. On Lady Pomfret's presenting the university of 

Oxford with statues. — Chalmers's English Poets, xvi. 290-1. 
c. 1755 w. Cumberland, Richard. [Fragment of an epic on India.]— Memoirs, 1807, 
i. 169-74. 

1756 2 Anon. The old elm in Hurworth, Durham. — Gent. Mag., xxvi. 247-8. 

Anon. The gout, a mock-heroic poem in imitation of the Splendid Shilling. 

-lb. 584. 
Anon. Sophronia, 5 books, 1756. 
Averay, Robert. Britannia and the gods in council, a dramatic poem, 

1756. — See Mo. Rev., xv. 84-5. 
Bally, George. On the wisdom of the Supreme Being. — Cambridge Prize 

Poems, i. 53-69. 
Drummond, Thomas. Grotto of Calypso. — Poems Sacred to Religion, etc., 

1756: see Mo. Rev., xv. 128-35. 

Morning adoration.— lb. 

Li^wis, Richard ("Peter Pounce"). The Robin-Hood society, a satire, 

1756. 

M., R. The dignity of knowledge.— Literary Magazine, or Universal Re- 
view, 1756, pp. 260-61. 

Reed, Joseph. A British philippic, 1756. 

1756 w. Keate, George. The Helvetiad. — Poetical Works, 1781, i. 83-124. 

Stratford, Thomas. Four pastoral essays, Dublin, 1770. 

1757 Andrews, Robert. Upon seeing a fair matron at the theatre, an ode.— 

Eidyllia, Edin., 1757, pp. 23-4. 

Virtue's expostulation with the British poets, an ode.— lb. 25-6. 

To adversity, an ode. — lb. 26-7. 

PhUocles, a monody.— lb. 28-39. 

The muses triumphant over Venus.— lb. 40-45. 

To Lord Shaftsbury's ghost, an ode.— lb. 47. 

Anon. Britain, 3 books, Edin., 1757. — See Crit. Rev., iv. 279-80. 
Anon. The great shepherd, 3 parts, 1757. — See Mo. Rev., xvi. 400-402. 
Bally, George. The day of judgment. — Cambridge Prize Poems, i. 299- 

320. 

* 1755 Clarke, Edward. A letter to a friend in Italy, etc., 175s. In blank verse: Mo. Rev., xiii. 

456. Not seen. 
' 1756 Greene, John. Beauty, 1736. In blank verse: ib. xiv. 558-9. Not seen. 



646 



BIBLIOGRAPHY I 



1757 Barnard, Edward. The competitors.— Virtue the Source of Pleasure, 

1757, PP- 17-21. 
DoBSON, William. Anti-Lucretius, [from] Cardinal de Polignac, by the 

translator of Paradise Lost, i7S7- 
Dyer, John. The fleece, 4 books, 1757. 

Glynn, Robert. The day of judgment. — Cambridge Prize Poems, i. 71-82. 
HiGHMORE, Susannah (Mrs. Buncombe). Ambition, 1757.— See Crit. 

Rev.,iii. 557. 
"Windsor." Upon a Birmingham halpenny. — Gent. Mag., xxvii. 325. 

1757 w. Davies, Sneyd. Caractacus.— J. Nichols's Illustrations, 1817, i. 668-71. 
1757-64 Newcomb, Thomas. Mr. Hervey's Meditations and Contemplations (after 

the manner of Dr. Young), 2 vols., 1764. — See Mo. Rev., xxx. 488. 

1758 Anon. Euthemia, or the power of jharmony, 1758.— See Crit. Rev., vi. 

344-S- 
Anon. Isaiah xxiv. — Dodsley's Miscellany, 1758, v. 177-83. 

Isaiah XXXV. — lb. 183-8. 

Anon. Reason, 1758. — See Crit. Rev., vi. 171-4- 

Bally, George. The providence of the Supreme Being. — Cambridge Prize 

Poems, i. 83-96. 
BuSHE, Amyas. Socrates, a dramatic poem, 5 acts, 1758.— See Crit. Rev., 

vi. 89-95. 
DoBSON, William. The Prussian campaign, 1758.— See ib. 81-3. 
DoDD, William. Thoughts on the glorious epiphany of the Lord Jesus 

Christ, 1758. 
"Restauratus." Verses in R. Drake's Essay on the Gout, 1758. — See 

Crit. Rev., vi. 493-4. 
WoTY, William ("Jemmy CopYvraLL"). Soliloquy on the approach of 

term. — Shrubs of Parnassus, 1760, pp. 14-16. 
The spouting-club.—Ib. 87-98. 

1758 w. Pye, Mrs. H. Philan the. — Poems, 2d ed., 1772, pp. 41-4. 
1758-9 Francklin, Thomas. The tragedies of Sophocles, 2 vols., 1758-9. 
1758-72 Akenside, Mark. Inscriptions i-iv, vi-viii.— Works, 1835, pp. 257-62. 

1759 Anon. The visitations of the Almighty, part i, 1759. — See Mo. Rev., xx. 

17-20. 
Cooper, E. Bewdley, a descriptive poem, 2 books. — Collection of Elegiac 

Poesy, etc., 1760, pp. 53-77. 
FoRTESCUE, James. Contemplation.— In Dissertations, Essays, etc., 1759: 

see Mo. Rev., xxi. 293-4. 
Gordon, Alexander. The Prussiad, an heroick poem, 1759. 
PoRTEUS, Beilby. Death. — Cambridge Prize Poems, i. 97-109. 
WoTY, William. Pudding. — Shrubs of Parnassus, 1760, pp. 46-7. 

1760 Anon. An essay on the evening and night.— Gent. Mag., xxx. 586-7. 
Anon. (John Patrick?). Quebec,in imitation of the Miltonic stile, 1760.— 

See Crit. Rev., x. 79. 
Anon. Verses to the king, 1760. — See Mo. Rev., xxiii. 411. 
Hamilton, William, of Bangour. To a gentleman going to travel. — Poems 

and Songs, 1850, pp. 94-101. 
Hayden, G. The birthday of Miss W. —Royal Female Mag. , ii. 84-5. 
Langhorne, John. Poem to Handel. — Poetical Works, 1766, i. 55-66. 
Newcomb, Thomas. The retired penitent, a poetical version of one of 

Young's moral contemplations, 1760. — See Mo. Rev., xxiii. 330-31. 
WoTY, William. A tankard of porter. — Shrubs of Parnassus, 1760, pp. 

20-22. 

The corkscrew.- Ib. 26-8. 

The tobacco-stopper. — Ib. 36-8. 



POEMS INFLUENCED BY PARADISE LOST 647 

1760 WoTY, William. The Caxon.— lb. 51-4. 

The moonlight night.— lb. 59-61. 

To independence.— lb. 76-8. 

Bagnigge-wells. — lb. 107-11. 

Hymn to the Deity.— lb. 117-27. 

The exhortation. — Poetical Works, 1770, ii. 51-5. 

1760 w. DoDD, William. Hymn to good-nature.- Poems, 1767, pp. 1-7. 

DowNMAN, Hugh. Address to peace.— Infancy, etc., 6th ed., Exeter, 1803, 
pp. 189-206. 

1761 ^ Fawkes, Francis. A parody on a passage in Paradise Lost.— Original 

Poems and Translations, 1761, pp. 84-5. 
Shepherd, Richard. The nuptials, a didactick poem, 3 books, 1761. 
WoTY, William. Campanalogia, in praise of ringing, 1761. 

* Barrington, Shute. "Genius of Britain! who with ancient Brute."— 
Pietas Universitatis Oxoniensis in Obitum . . . Georgii II et Gratulatio 
in . . . Georgii III Inaugurationem, Oxford, 1761, D. 
Napier, Gerard. "If the rude Empire of wide- wasting Time."— lb. E. 
Sharp, William. To the lord bishop of Sarum.- lb. K2, verso. 
Bagot, Lewis. "Now was still Time of Night."— lb. 5L, verso. 
Grenville, James. "Roll, Isis, roll your melancholy Stream." — lb. T, 

verso. 
Crosse, Richard. "Hence empty Joys! "—lb. Aa2, verso. 
AwBREY, John. "Profane not, Time." — lb. Cc, verso. 
Falconer, J. "No more of festal Pomp."— lb. Ff2. 
Vyse, William. "'Twas Silence all."— lb. Hh, verso. 
Lovell, Edmund. "'Twas Eve; Darkness came on."— lb. Ii2. 
Broadhead, H. T. "While every neighb'ring Land."— lb. Kk, verso. 
Courtenay, Henry. "Now strike the plaintive Lyre."— lb. Kk2, verso. 
Stone, Francis. "Could fabled Phoebus, or th' Aonian Nine."— lb. 

O02, verso. 
Jekyll, J. "Far from the Ken of those sad dreary Plains."— lb. Qq2. 
RuGELEY, George. "The Muse, that erst in soft Oblivion slept."— lb. Rr. 
Leigh, Thomas. "On Albion's topmost Cliff." — lb. Zz, verso. 
Cleaver, W. "Haste on, ye Clouds."— lb. Bbb. 
Forster, Nathaniel. "This, this is Virtue's Prize."— lb. Eee2, verso. 
Children, G "What now avails the splendid Boast of Arms."— lb. 

Hhh2. 
FoRTESCUE, James. "When Acclamations from each grateful Voice." — 

lb. Kkk, verso. 
Fanshaw, John. "Let not unhallow'd sounds." — Epithalamia Oxoniensia, 

sive Gratulationes in . . . Georgii III . . . Nuptias, Oxford, i76i,D2, 

verso. 
Spence, Joseph. "At length the gallant Navy from afar."— lb. G. 
Thomas, Edward. "'Tis not the gaudy pageantry of state."— lb. N, 

verso. 
Ratcliffe, Houstonne. "The mitred Sage had now with reverence due." 

-Ib.T2. 
Reynell, W. H. "Not to the shepherd's hutt, and rural cell."— lb. Z2, 



1 1761 DovNE, Phiup. The delivery of Jerusalem, translated into blank verse, 2 vols., Dublin, 1761. 
Not seen. 
Williams, William. An essay on Halifax [Yorkshire], in blank verse, Halifax, 1761. Not seen. • 
• For convenience of reference, the titles in books which have signature letters instead of pagination 
are arranged as they occur in the volumes, and only the leaf on which the poem begins is indicated. 



648 BIBLIOGRAPHY I 

1761 CouRTENAY, Henrv. "Now from Germania's shore the chosen bark." — 

lb. Ff 2, verso. 
RuGELEY, George. "Still Britain sits amid surrounding waves."— lb. 

Kk, verso. 
Pepys, W. Weller. "If yet, as Fame reports, the royal ear."— lb. Nn, 

verso. 
Lovell, Edmxjnd. "Visions of glory croud yon distant view."— lb. Pp2, 

verso. 
Phelps, Richard. To his royal highness the duke of York.- lb. Qq2, 

verso. 
Snell, Powell. "Now was fair evening's hour."— lb. Tt2. 
Fortescxje, J. "Now Hymen in connubial bands unites."— lb. Xx, verso. 
Keate, William. "How blest the self-directed peasant's choice." — 
Gratulatio Academiae Cantabrigiensis . . . Georgii III . . . Nuptias 
celebrantis , Camb . 1 76 1 , H 2 . 
Ekins, Jeffery. "O Harcourt, in thy Prince's partial love."— lb. li, verso. 

1762^ Anon. The victory. — Scots Mag., xxiv. 263. 

Duncan, John. An essay on happiness, 4 books, 1762. 

Langhorne, John. The viceroy, 1762. 

Lyttelton, George, Lord. On reading Miss Carter's poems. — Poetical 

Works, 1801, p. 117. 
Portal, Abraham. Innocence, 2 books, 1762. 
WoTY, William. The chimney-corner.— Works, 1770, ii. 1x5-31. 

* Graham, Robert. "Must thou, Iberia! who in envied ease." — Gratu- 
latio Academiae Cantabrigiensis Natales . . . Georgii Walliae Principis . . . 
celebrantis, Camb., 1762, H. 
ZoucH, Thomas. "With wanton pride Ohio sweeps."— lb. K, verso. 
Tyson, Michael. "Breathe with soft melody."— lb. U. 
Morgan, Nathaniel. "Spirit of Liberty."— lb. Bb. 
Hey, John. "Fair Hope, I thank thee'."— lb. Cc2, verso. 
North, Brownlow. To the queen. — Gratulatio Solennis Universitas 

Oxoniensis ob . . . Walliae Principem . . . Natum, Oxford, 1762, C. 
Russell, John. "Pure are the joys."— lb. E2. 
Spence, Joseph. "Hail to the sacred day."— lb. H2. 
FoRTESCUE, James. "From heaven again the roll descends."— lb. I, verso. 
Bagot, Lewis. "Those votive strains, O Isis."— lb. K2. 
Courtenay, Henry. "Again Britannia's bards."- lb. O, verso. 
Earle, W. B. "On that auspicious day."— lb. U2. 
Symmons, John. "All human things experience change."— lb. Aa, verso. 
Thomas, Edmund. "Though distant far from Isis' honour'd banks."— lb. 

Hh2. 
Butt, George. "Time-honour'd Isis."— lb. Kk2. 

SiBTHORP, Humphrey. "While by the side of Isis' sedgy stream."— lb. LI. 
Beckman, William. "With joyous sound of gratulation due."— lb. Nn, 
verso. 

bef. 1763W. Shenstone, William. (Economy, addressed to young poets.— Works 
in Verse and Prose, 1764, i. 285-307. 

The ruin'd abby.— lb. 308-21. 

Love and honour.— lb. 321-32. 

1 1762 Ogden, James. On the crucifixion and resurrection, 1762. In blank verse: Crit. Rev., xiii. 

363-4. Not seen. 
• For the order, see above, p. 647, note. 



POEMS INFLUENCED BY PARADISE LOST 649 

1763 Anon. Liberty ["in imitation of Milton"], 1763. — See Crit. Rev., xvi. 240. 

Anon. A poetical wreath of laurel and olive, 1763. — See ib. xv. 230-31. 
Anon. Satires on the times, 2 parts, 1763. — See ib. xvi. 392-3. 
Anon. The temple of Gnidus, from Montesquieu , 1 763. — See ib. xv. 389-90. 
Anon. The wedding ring.— Lond. Mag., xxxii. 608. 
Callander, John. A hymn to the power of harmony, Edin., 1763. — See 

Crit. Rev., xviii. 320. 
Hey, John. The redemption. — Cambridge Prize Poems, i. 147-72. 
Keate, George. The Alps.— Works, 1781, ii. 51-84. 
Lloyd, Robert. The death of Adam, from Klopstock, 3 acts, 1763. 
MiCKLE, W. J.(?) Providence, or Arandus and Emilec, 1763. — See Crit. 

Rev., xiv. 276-80. 
Newcomb, Thomas. The death of Abel [from Gessner], attempted in the 

stile of Milton, 1763. 
Pennington, Mrs. The copper farthing. — Poetical Calendar, 1763, x. 

48-53. 
Thompson, William. Garden inscriptions, iv: In Milton's alcove.— Ib. 

viii. 100. 
Garden inscriptions, xix: In an apple-tree, over Mr. Philips's Cyder.— 

Ib. 118. 
WoTY, William. The pin.— Works, 1770, i. 55-8. 
ZoucH, Thomas. "'Tis false: not all the gay parade of power." — Gratu- 

latio Acad. Cantab, in Pacem . . . Restitutam, Camb., 1763, 1. 
c. 1763 w. Bruce, Michael. The last day. — Works, ed. Grosart, Edin., 1865, pp. 

157-75- 
c. 1763? w. Lyttelton, George, Lord. Verses. — P. C. Yorke's Life of Philip Yorke, 

Earl of Hardwicke, Camb., 1913, ii. 524, 571; iii. 303. 
1763-4 Anon. The Messiah: bk. i. The nativity; bk. ii. The temptation; bk. iii, 

The crucifixion; bk. iv, The resurrection. Camb., 1763-4.-806 Crit. 

Rev., xvii. 318-20, 472; xviii. 320. 
1764 Anon. On beneficence, 1764.-866 Mo. Rev., xxx. 242-3. 

Carr, John. Filial piety, 1764. 
Grainger, James. The sugar-cane, 4 books, 1764. 
H., W. The street. — Scots Mag., xxvi. 93-4. 
Hawkins, William. The Aeneid [books i-vi], translated, 1764.^— See Crit. 

Rev., xvii. 424-9. 
Ogilvie, John. Providence, an allegorical poem, 3 books, 1764. 
Whateley, Mary (Mrs. Darwall). The pleasures of contemplation.— 

Original Poems, 1764: see Mo. Rev., xxx. 449. 
1764 w. Lettice, John. The conversion of St. Paul. — Cambridge Prize Poems, i. 

173-82. 
1765^ Anon. Landscape: an August evening. — Scots Mag., xxvii. 154-5. 
Anon. A rhapsody on leaving Bath. — Gent. Mag., xxxv. 431. 
Bridges, Thomas. The battle of the genii, 3 cantos, 1765.-866 Mo. Rev., 

xxxii. 276-9. 
Cooper, E. The elbow-chair, 1765. 
Foster, Mark. Scarborough, Scarborough, 1765. — J. S. Fletcher's 

Picturesque Yorkshire, 1901, vi. 130-31. 
HoLLis, J. Morning. — Gent. Mag., xxxv. 527. 
L., T. (Thomas Letchworth?) . Miscellaneous reflections, or an evening's 

meditation, 1765.-866 Mo. Rev., xxxii. 75. 

1 The other six books were translated but not published. 

' 1765 Anon. The advantages of repentance, a moral tale, 1765. In blank verse: Crit. Rev., xix. 152. 
Not seen. 
Anon. The death of a friend, 1765. In blank verse: Mo. Rev., zxxiii. 85. Not seen. 



650 BIBLIOGRAPHY I 



1765 Letchworth, Thomas. A morning's meditation, 1765.-866 Crit. Rev., 

xLx. 313. 
ZoucH, Thomas. The crucifixion. — Cambridge Prize Poems, i. 183-98. 

1766 ^ Andrews, Robert. The works of Virgil, Englished, Birmingham, 1766. 

Anon. The ocean, 1766. — See Crit. Rev., xxi. 151-2. 
Meen, Henry. Happiness, 1766. — See ib. xxii. 73. 
1766? Anon. Cooper's hill, address'd to Sir W. W. Wynne, i766(?). — See ib. 380- 

81. 
Bruce, Michael. Lochleven.— Works, 1865, 176-97. 
Nichols, John. Happiness. — Collection of Poems, 1782, viii. 144-6. 

1766 w. 1774 p. Richardson, William. On the death of the earl and countess of 

Sutherland. — Poems, chiefly Rural, 3d ed., 1775, pp. 147-9- 

1767 Anon. Health, 1767.-866 Mo. Rev., xxxvii. 315-16. 

Anon. On the death of the marquis of Tavistock, 1767.-866 ib. xxxvi. 

330-31- 

DoDD, William. On the death of Anthony Ellis. — Poems, 1767, pp. 71-3. 

J ago, Richard. Edge-hill, 4 books, 1767. 

Jenner, Charles. The gift of tongues. — Cambridge Prize Poems, i. 
199-209. 

Jones, Henry. Kew garden, 2 cantos, 1767.-866 Crit. Rev., xxiv. 315-16. 

Lancaster, Nathaniel. Methodism triumphant, or the decisive battle 
between the old serpent and the modern saint, 1767.-866 ib. xxv. 66-7. 

Langley, Samuel. The Iliad, translated, book i, 1767.-866 ib. xxiii. 36-41. 

Singleton, John. A general description of the West-Indian islands, Bar- 
bados, 1767. 

1768 Anon. Choheleth, or the royal preacher, 1768. 

Anon. The 30th psalm, paraphrased.- Court Miscellany, iv. 557-8. 

Anon. The tears of Neptune. — Gent. Mag., xxxviii. 439-40. 

J. An invocation to the gout.— Oxford Mag., i. 277. 

Jenner, Charles. The destruction of Nineveh. — Cambridge Prize Poems, 

i. 211-24. 
M. , A. Verses on seeing a beautiful young lady. — Court Miscellany, iv. 614. 
1768 w. Richardson, William. Corsica. — Poems, chiefly Rural, 1774, pp. 67-78. 

1768 w. 1785 p. LoviBOND, Edward. Verses written after passing through Findon.— 

Chalmers's English Poets, xvi. 299. 
1768? w. 1892 p. CowPER, William. (?) A thunder storm. — Poetical Works, Oxford 
ed.,pp. 626-8. 

1769 Anon. Friendship, a poem, to which is added an ode, 1769.-866 Crit. Rev., 

xxviii. 300-302. 
Anon. A poetical address, in favour of the Corsicans, 1769.-866 Mo. Rev., 

xl. 250. 
Anon. Punch, a panegyric, attempted in the manner of Milton, 1769. 
Anon. On seeing the late comet. — Gent. Mag., xxxix. 551-2. 
Hazard, Joseph. The conquest of Quebec, Oxford, 1769.-866 Crit. Rev., 

xxvii. 469-71. 
Jones, Henry. The Arcana, or mystic gem, 2 cantos, Wolverhampton, 

1769. 

1769 w. AiKiN, A. L. (Mrs. Barbauld). Corsica. — Poems, 1773, pp. 1-12. 

1770 Anon. An idyllion. — Scots Mag., xxxii. 561-2. 

Fellows , John. Grace triumphant, in nine dialogues, Birmingham, 1770.— 
Contains some Miltonic blank verse: see Mo. Rev., xliv. 89-90. 

HoDSON, William. Dedication of the temple of Solomon. — Cambridge 
Prize Poems, i. 225-40. 

1 1766 Anon. Dedication to Cavalier Marino's Cynthia and Daphne, 1766. In blank verse: Mo. 
Rev., XXXV. 322, Not seen. 



POEMS INFLUENCED BY PARADISE LOST 65 1 

1770 WoTY, William. A mock invocation to genius.— Works, 1770, i. 1-7. 1^ 

The looking-glass.— lb. 59-63. ■ 

The pediculaiad, or buckram triumphant.— lb. 142-59. 1 

The moralist.— lb. ii. 56-9. \ 

To charity. -lb. 78-81. ( 

The deathof Abel.— lb. 132-44. \ 

The old shoe.— lb. 156-60. \ 

1770 w. 1804 p. Jones, Sir William. Britain discovered, an heroic poem in twelve, 

books [only " design" and two short fragments printed].— Works, 1807, ii. 
429-54. 
c. 1770 w. Wallace, George. Prospects from hills in Fife, 1796. — See Scots Mag., 
Iviii. 623-7. 

1771 Fellows, John. The Bromsgrove elegy on the death of George Whitefield, 

1771. 
Fergusson, Robert. A Saturday's expedition, in mock heroics.— Works 

1851, pp. 179-84. 
Foot, James. Penseroso, or the pensive philosopher, 6 books, 1771. 

G . Winter amusement.— Weekly Mag. or Edin. Amusement, xi. 180. 

Jemmat, Catharine. On seeing Mr. Mossop preform.— Miscellanies, 1771 , 

pp. 10-12. 

A morning reflection.— lb. 17-18. 

Retirement.— lb. 72-3. 

A paraphrase on the 104th psalm, in imitation of Milton's style.— 

lb. 127-30. 

Rural life. —lb. 191-4. 

The farmer.— lb. 204-5. 

An idea of God, translated from Racine.— lb. 210-11. 

Langhorne, John. Fable x. The wilding and the broom.— Fables of Flora, 

i77i,PP- 57-61. 
Roberts, W. H. A poetical epistle: [part i] on the existence of God; 

[part ii] on the attributes of God; [part iii] on the providence of God. 

3parts,i77i. 

1771 w. Lyttelton, Thomas, Lord. The state of England in the year 2199.— 

Poems, 1780, pp. 7-16. 

1772 1 Anon. A view of sundry regions of the earth.— Scots Mag., xxxiv, 38-9. 

Daintry M. J. On music— Town and Country Mag., iv. 553. 
Fergusson, Robert. The town and country contrasted.— Works, ed. 
Grosart, 1851, pp. 173-5- 

Fashion.— lb. 191-3. 

Good eating.— lb. 214-18. 

Gibbons, Thomas. Habakkuk, chapter iii.— The Christian Minister, 1772, 
pp. 90-95. 

Hymn of Cleanthes to Jupiter.— lb. 97-9. 

Pythagoras's golden verses.— lb. 99-104. 

Casimire, book ii, ode 5.- lb. 109-13. 

To our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.— lb. 11 8-21. 

The sufferings of Christ.— lb. 122-4. 

God our Creator.— lb. 161. 

Gibson, Willlam. Conscience. — Cambridge Prize Poems, i. 241-50. 
1772-82 Mason, William. The English garden, 4 books.— Works, 1811, i. 201-424. 

1 1772 Trapaxid, Elisha. The oeconomy of happiness, 1772. In blank verse: Crit. Rev., xxxiv. 470. 
Not seen. 



652 BIBLIOGRAPHY I 

1773 ^ AiKiN, A. L. (Mrs. Barbauld). A summer evening's meditation. — Poems, 

1773, PP; 131-8. 
Anon. Soliloquy on the last shilling. — Gent. Mag., xliii. 294. 
Fergusson, Robert. The Canongate play-house in ruins.— Works, 1851, 

pp. 205-8. 

The bugs.— lb. 230-34. 

Tea.— lb. 235-7. 

■ An expedition to Fife, and the island of May.— lb. 238-41. 

To Dr. Samuel Johnson: food for a new edition of his dictionary.— 

lb. 246-8. 
Layard, C. p. Charity. — Cambridge Prize Poems, i. 251-66. 
Roberts, W. H. A poetical epistle to Christopher Anstey, on the English 

poets, chiefly those who have written in blank verse, 1773.— See Crit. 

Rev., XXXV. 52-4. 
c. 1773 w. AiKiN, A. L. (Mrs. Barbauld). [Character of John Mort.]— H. Toulmin's 

Short View of the Life of Mort, 1793, pp. 47-8. 

1774 Anon. [A description of winter.] — Poems, 1774: see Crit. Rev., xxxvii. 

395-6. 
B., W. To Miss C d, who lent the author Dodsley's Poems.— Gent. 

Mag.,xliv. 135. 
"MusARXJM Amicus." Faith.— Town and Country Mag., vi. 271-2. 
Pratt, S. J. ("Courtney Melmoth")- The tears of genius, 1774. 
"Pygmalion." The apple dumpling.— Town and Country Mag., vi. 271. 
Richardson, William. Rowena. — Poems, chiefly Rural, 1774, pp. 47-8. 

The fate of avarice.— lb. 49-50. 

The Naiad. -lb. 51-3. 

Runny mead.— lb. 57-66. 

On the death of a young lady.— lb. 89-90. 

The noble hermit.— lb. 94-6. 

The progress of melancholy. — lb. 99-1 1 1 . 

Roberts, W. H. Judah restored, 6 books, 2 vols., 1774. 

A poetical epistle to a young gentleman on leaving Eton.— Poems, 

1774: see Crit. Rev., xxxvii. 213-14. 
Whitehead, William. The sweepers. — Plays and Poems, 1774, ii. 239-43. 
1774-6 Bryant, Jacob. [Numerous short translations from classical writers.] — 

A New System, or an Analysis of Antient Mythology, 3d ed., 1807, 

6 vols., passim. 
Downman, Hugh. Infancy, or the management of children, 6 books.— 

Infancy, etc., 1803, pp. 1-186. 

1775 Anon. The birth-place, in the manner of Young, 1775. — See Mo. Rev., 

lii. 356. 
Anon. The cypress- tree , or moral reflections in a country churchyard, 1775. 
F., D., Jun. Friendship.— Lond. Mag., xliv. 39-40. 
Hayes, Samuel. Duelling. — Cambridge Prize Poems, i. 281-98. 
Layard, C. P. Duelling. — lb. 267-79. 
Maurice, Thomas. The school-boy, in imitation of Mr. Philips's Splendid 

Shilling, Oxford, 1775. 
Penrose, Thomas. The helmets. — Flights of Fancy, 1775, PP- 3-9- 
i775~93 YouDE, John. The adventures of Telemachus, 3 vols., 1793. — See Mo. 

Rev. , enl. , xi. 105-6. 

' 1773 Clarke, John. The adventures of Telemachus, translated, book i, 1773. In blank verse: 
Mo. Rev., xlix. 316. Not seen. 
Greene, E. B. Hero and Leander, from Musaeus, 1773. In blank verse: Crit. Rev., xxxvii. 
315. Not seen. 



POEMS INFLUENCED BY PARADISE LOST 653 

1776 1 B., E. Some additional lines recited at the Caractacan meeting. — Gent. 

Mag.,xlvi. 427. 
Crawford, Charles. The first canto of the revolution, an epic poem, 

1776. — See Crit. Rev., xli. 475-8. 
Hardcastle, Sandford. Edgar. — Poetical AmiiiSements at a Villa near 

Bath, ed. Lady A. R. Miller, 1776, ii. 14-22. 

Benevolence.— lb. 162-8. 

Jephson, R. Extempore ludicrous Miltonic verses.— Asylum for Fugitive 

Pieces, 1799 [1789], iii. 266-7. 
Scott, John. Amwell, a descriptive poem, 1776. 

1776 w. Hayes, Samxtel. Prophecy. — Cambridge Prize Poems, ii. 1-19. 

1777 Anon. Pursuit after happiness, 1777. 

Beatson, John. Divine philanthropy, Leeds, 1777. — See Crit. Rev., xlvii. 

156. 
DoDD, William. Thoughts in prison, 5 parts, new ed., Bath, 1796. 
Hardcastle, Sandford. Ancient and modern music compared. — Poetical 

Amusements, 1777, iii'. 38-47. 
Hayes, Samuel. Prayer. — Cambridge Prize Poems, ii. 21-38. 
M.AvoR, William. An address to the Deity. — Parnassian Sprigs, 1777, 

pp. 17-24- 
Potter, Robert. The tragedies of Aeschylus, translated, Norwich, 1777. 
ScHOMBERG, A. C. Bagley, a descriptive poem, Oxford, 1777. 

1778 2 Anon. Caledonia, 1778. — See Crit. Rev., xlvii. 311-12. 

Fellows, John. An elegiac poem on A. M. Toplady, 1778. — See ib. xlvi. 

397- 
Hayes, Samuel. The nativity of our Saviour. — Cambridge Prize Poems, 

Kellet, Alexander. Reason. — A Pocket of Prose and Verse, Bath, 1778: 

see Crit. Rev., xlvi. 457-60. 
"Lysander." On the death of a friend. — Gent. Mag., xlviii. 232. 
Maurice, Thomas. The Oxonian. — Poems, Epistolary, Lyric, and Elegia- 

cal, 1800, pp. 32-40. 

1778 w. Jephson, R. Burlesque Miltonic: extempore answer to an invitation.— 

Asylum for Fugitive Pieces, 1789, iii. 268-70. 
bef. 1779 w. Penrose, Thomas. Address to the genius of Britain. — Poems, 1781, pp. 

38-47- 
Donnington castle.— Ib. 93-6. 

1779 Anon. A ride and walk through Stourhead, 1779. — See Crit. Rev., xlix. 156. 
Anon. The Anti-Palliseriad, or Britain's triumph over France, 1779. — See 

Mo. Rev., be. 230. 
Cunningham, Peter. (?) Leith hill [2d ed.], 1789. — See ib. Ixxxi. 280. 
Fawcett, John. The death of Eumenio, Leeds, 1779. 
1779 w. 1802 p. Anon. Lines, written at Godstowe. — Europ. Mag., xli. 207-8. 

1779 w. Warton, Joseph. Verses written on passing through Hackwood park.— 

Biographical Memoirs, 1806, p. 168. 
c. 1779 w. Crabbe, George. Midnight. — Poems, ed. A. W. Ward, Camb., 1905, i. 
47-60. 

1780 Anon. The churchyard, by a youth of eighteen.— Univ. Mag., Ixvii. 37. 
Anon. Paradise regain'd, or the battle of Adam and the Fox, an heroick 

poem, 1780. 
Hughes, Thomas. The ascension. — Cambridge Prize Poems, ii. 55-66. 

' 1776 Anon. The exhibition of fancy, 1776. In blank verse: Crit. Rev., xli. 404. Not seen. 

Anon. The flight of freedom, 1776. In blank verse: ib. xlii. 231. Not seen. 
' 1778 Anon. Acadenuc trifles, a collection of poetical essays, 1778. Contains eight pieces in blank 
verse: ib. xlvi. 68. Not seen. 



654 BIBLIOGRAPHY I 

1780 Hunt, Mr. Habakkuck, chap, iii, in imitation of Milton: a college exer- 

cise. — Gent. Mag. , 1. 435. 
Lyttelton, Thomas, Lord. An invitation to Miss Warb-rt-n. — Poems, 

1780, pp. 28-9. 
Walters, John. The vision of Slander and Innocence. — Poems, O.xford, 

1 780, pp. 84-6. 

1781 Anon. Ditis chorus, or hell broke loose, from Petronius Arbiter, 1781.— 

See Crit. Rev., liii. 67-8. 
Anon. Verses on death of a youth.— Town and Country Mag., xiii. 46-7. 
Heriot, George. A descriptive poem, written in the West Indies, 1781.— 

See Crit. Rev., Hi. 147. 
LoFFT, Capel. Eudosia, or a poem on the universe, 1781. — See Mo. Rev., 

Ixvi. 305-6. 
Pinkerton, John. Symphony i: On the music of poesy. — Rimes, 2d ed., 

1782, pp. 57-64- 

Symphony ii: Defeat of the opera.— lb. 65-70. 

Sympson, Joseph. The beauties of spring, 1781. — See Crit. Rev., Iii. 201-3. 
1781-3 Potter, Robert. The tragedies of Euripides, translated, 2 vols., 1781-3. 

1782 ' Anon. Address to health.— Verses on Several Occasions, 1782, pp. 79-81, 

Anon. Enoch, book i, 1782. 

Badcock, Mr. The hermitage.— Lond. Mag., li. 41. 

Madan, Spencer. The call of the Gentiles. — Cambridge Prize Poems, ii. 

107-17. 
More, Hannah. Introduction [to Sacred Dramas].— Works, 1830, i. 1-6. 
Rogers, Charles. The Inferno of Dante, translated, 1782. 
Sterling, Joseph. The rhapsodist. — Poems, Dublin, 1782, pp. 3-26. 
Stevens, W. B. Retirement. — Poems, 1782, pp. 1-29. 
WoDHULL, Michael. The nineteen tragedies and fragments of Euripides, 

translated, new ed., 3 vols., 1809. 
17832 Roberts, William. The sciences. — Poetical Attempts, 1783: see Crit. 

Rev. ,lvi. 71. 
V. Imitations of three of our most celebrated poets: ii. An harvest scene; 

iii, "Look upon the Rainbow."— Gent. Mag., liii. 958-9. 
bef. 1784 w. 1786 p. Bowdler, Jane. On the new-year. — Poems and Essays, New 

York, 181 1, pp. 39-49. 
1 784 Anon. Speech to the sun of the political hemisphere, by a fallen angel , 1 784. 

— See Crit. Rev., Ivii. 151-2. 
Billinge, Charles. Charity. — Poems on Christian Charity, etc., Wolver- 
hampton, 1784, pp. 7-29. 

Contentment.— lb. 31-51. 

Hymn to Providence.— lb. 53-4. 

Melancholy. -lb. 55-88. 

Hayes, Samuel. Creation. — Cambridge Prize Poems, ii. 137-56. 

LoFFT, Capel. The first and second Georgic, 1784. — See Mo. Rev., Ixxii. 

345-8- 
V. On the dark, still, dry, warm weather. — Gent. Mag., liv. 287. 

1784? Stratford, Thomas. The first book of Fontenoy, a poem in nine books, 

i784(?).-See Mo. Rev., Ixxi. 95-8. 
1784 w. 1824 p. CowPER, William. To the immortal memory of the halibut on which 

I dined.— Poems, ed. Bailey, 1905, pp. 440-41. 

* 1782 MuGUSTON, William. A contemplative walk, 1782. In blank verse: Crit. Rev., liv. 478-9. 

Not seen. 
Roberts, William. Thoughts upon creation, 1782. In blank verse: Gent. Mag., 1842, ii. 

578 n. Not seen. 
' 1783 Anon. Ippopaidia, 1783. In blank verse: Crit. Rev., Iv. 488. Not seen. 



POEMS INFLUENCED BY PARADISE LOST 655 

1784-^1 w. CowPER, William. The Iliad [and Odyssey], translated, 2 vols 1791. 
178s Anon. To Mr. Hayley, on reading his tragedy of Russel.-Gent. Mag., Iv. 



214. 



Booker, Luke. An elegy.-Poems, Wolverhampton, 1785, i. 60-65. 

To the all-present, yet unknown God. -lb. ii. 15-1*- 

Clifton-grove. -lb. 69-112. 

CowpER, William. The task, 6 books, 1785. 

Pratt, S. T. Landscapes in verse. - Sympathy, etc., 1807, pp. 75-118. 

Seward, Anna. Colebrook dale. - Poetical Works, ed. W. Scott, Edin., 

1810, ii. 314-19- 
Yearsley, Ann. Night.-Poems on Several Occasions, 1785, pp. i-iS- 

Address to friendship. — lb. 79-85. 

On Mrs. Montagu.— lb. 101-6. 

1785-9 Polwhele, Richard. The English orator, 4 books, 1785-9- 

1786 Anon. Description of Achilles' attacking the Trojan army, from Homer.- 

New Foundling Hospital for Wit, new ed., 1786, i. 248-50. 
Anon Nature, book i, Bristol, i786.-See Mo. Rev., Ixxiv. 564. ^ 
F E The praise of potatoes, a burlesque. -Asylum for Fugitive Pieces, 
"1786, ii. 128-30. (In the Edinburgh Magazine for July, 1786, it is signed 

"K A ") 
Headley, Henry. Invocation to melancholy. -Poetical Works, ed. T. 

Park, 1808, pp. 11-16. 

To Cynthia.-Ib. 17. 

Knipe, Eliza. Monody [on] Frederick II.-Europ. Mag., x. 290. 
Rickman, T. C. The fallen cottage, Philadelphia (U. S. A.), i793- 
Robinson, Mr. The prize of Venus, or Killamey lake, i786.-See Cnt. 

Rev., Ixi. 31 4-15- 
1786? Carysfort, J. J. The revenge of Guendolen, 5 books. -Dramatic and 

Narrative Poems, 1810, ii. 1-15S- 

1787 Anon. Female virtues, 1787. -See Grit. Rev., Ixiv. 225. 

Anon. Monody on Sir James Hunter-Blair.- Scots Mag., xlix. 348. 

Anon. The death of honour. -Europ. Mag., xii. 422. 

Booker, Luke. The highlanders, Stourbridge, 1787. 

Glover, Richard. The Athenaid, 30 books, 1787. 

Greenwood, William. Poem written during a shooting excursion, Bath, 

1 787. -See Mo. Rev., Ixxvii. 491-2. 

H o. Thetwelfthof August. -Scots Mag., xlix. 402. 

L C. Written at the seat of T. B. HoUis.-Gent. Mag., Ivii. 72. 
Polwhele, Richard. Address to Thomas Pennant on his intended visit 

into Cornwall. -Poems, 1810, ii. 32-5. 
" Ramble." Lines written [near] a gentleman's seat. -Europ. Mag. , xii. 424. 
" ViCARius." Sketches of beauty, 6 books, Stockdale, 1787. -See Mo. Rev., 

Ixxviii. 80. 
Whitehouse, John. Elegy written near the ruins of a nunnery.- Poems, 

1787, pp. 1-9- 

A hymn of triumph.— lb. 54-60. 

Description of the grotto of Calypso, from Fenelon.-Ib. 72-5. 

Mentor's reproof of Telemachus [from Fenelon].— lb. 76. 

The song of the nymphs [from Fenelon]. -lb. 77-9- 

Inscription iii.— lb. 98-9. 

Inscription for the root-house.— lb. 100. 

Written in a rustic temple.— lb. 104-6. 

Yearsley, Ann. To sensibility. - Poems on Various Subjects, 1787: see 

New Annual Register, 1787, pp. [199-200]. 
To indifference.- lb. [201-2]. 



656 BIBLIOGRAPHY I 

1787 w. DowNMAN, Hugh. To independence.— Infancy, etc., 1803, pp. 219-23. 

PoLWHELE, Richard. To a clergyman. — Sketches in Verse, 1796, p. 66. 
1787-8 RoscoE, William. The wrongs of Africa, 2 parts, 1787-8. 
1788 1 Anon. (James Cririe?) . Address to Loch Lomond, 1788.— See Mo. Rev., 

Ixxix. 365-7. 
Crowe, William. Lewesdon hill, Oxford, 1788. 
HuRDis, James. The village curate, 1788. 

Potter, Robert. The tragedies of Sophocles, translated, new ed., 1820. 
TuRNBULL, Gavin. Evening. — Poetical Essays, Glasgow, 1788, pp. 89-99. 
Weston, Joseph. The woodmen of Arden, translated from John Morfitt's 
Philotoxi Ardenae, Birmingham, 1788. — Records of the Woodmen of 
Arden, 1885, pp. 105-13. 

1788 w. Seward, Anna. Remonstrance to Cowper.— Works, 1810, iii. 5-14. 
1789 2 Anon. The college hero, from the Latin. — Gent. Mag., ILx. 451-2. 

Anon. Gallick liberty, a poem occasioned by the revolution in France.— 

New Lond. Mag., v. 552. 
Anon. The vision, on the restoration of his majesty's health, 1789. — See 

Mo. Rev., Lxxx. 554. 
GiLBANK, William. The day of Pentecost, or man restored, 12 books, 1789. 

— See Grit. Rev., Ixvii. 351-4. 
Homer, Philip. To the fritillary. — Gent. Mag., lix. 448. 
Jamieson, John. The sorrows of slavery, 1789. — See Grit. Rev., Ixvii. 

468-9. 
Reid, W. H. The panic, or a meditation on the plague. — Scots Mag., li. 

444. 
Swain, Joseph. Redemption, 8 books, Boston (U. S. A.), 1812. 

1789 w. 1794? p. Roberts, John. The deluge. — Cambridge Prize Poems, ii. 193-205. 

1790 Anon. Sunday, 1790. — See Grit. Rev., bcx. 95. 

Deacon, D. The triumph of liberty. — Poems, Chesterfield, 1790, pp. 1-53. 
Dunster, Charles ("Marmaduke Milton"). St. James's street, 1790. 
HxiRDis, James. Adriano, 1790. 

Elmer and Ophelia. — Poems, 1790, pp. 1-59. 

Panthea. — lb. 69-227. 

Sotheby, William. A tour through parts of Wales, 2 books. — Poems, etc., 
Bath, 1790, pp. 1-40. 

1 790 w. Dermody , Thomas . The triumph of gratitude . — Life , with Original Poetry , 

by J. G. Raymond, 1806, i. 118-23. 

1791 AiKiN, John. Picturesque, in the manner of Cowper.— Poems, 1791, pp. 

52-7- 

Epistle to the Rev. W. Enfield.-Ib. 82-9. 

F., D. S. "Nigh where the Thames rolls on in silent pomp."— Europ. 
Mag., xix. 231-3. 

Philpot, Charles. Humility, a night thought.— Cambridge Prize Poems, 
ii. 219-34. 

"An Under Graduate." The dictates of indignation, on the African 
slave trade, 1791. — See Grit. Rev., new arr., ii. 168-70. 

Williams, John ("Anthony Pasquin"). Shrove Tuesday, a satiric rhap- 
sody, 1 79 1. 
1791W. i8o3p. Cowper, William. The four ages, a brief fragment. — Poems, ed. 
Bailey, 1905, pp. 477-8. 

* 1788 Canton, G. The adventures of Telemachus, translated into blank verse, book i, 1788. Not 

seen. 
' 1789 Booker, Luke. Knowle hill (in Miscellaneous Poems, Stourbridge, 1789). In blank versei 

Crit. Rev., new arr., x. 41. Not seen. 



POEMS INFLUENCED BY PARADISE LOST 657 

1791 w. 1804 p. CowPER, William. Yardley oak.— lb. 479-83. 

1791 w. i8iop. CowPER, William, and Hayley, William. Adam, translated from 

Andreini.— Life and Works of Cowper, ed. Southey, 1837, x. 239-387. 
1791-2 w. 1808 p. Cowper, William. Nature unimpaired by time [from Milton].— 

Poems, ed. Bailey, 1905, pp. 576-8. 

• On the Platonic idea [from Milton].— lb. 578-9. 

— — To his father [from Milton].— lb. 579-82. 

1792 Anon. A morning walk, 1792. — See Mo. Rev., enl., ix. 330-31. 
Cumberland, Richard. Calvary, or the death of Christ, 8 books, 1792. 
Lloyd, David. The voyage of life, 9 books, 1792. 

Young , William. Paraphrase on the first chapter of Genesis. — Univ. Mag. , 

xc. 449-50- 

1792 w. AiKLN, A. L. (Mrs. Barbauld). To Dr. Priestley.— Works, 1825, i. 183-4. 

C-B-s, L-s-R. The icead. — Gent. Mag., Lxii. 846-7. 

1793 1 Anon. The genius of France, 1793. — See Mo. Rev., enl., xii. 102-3. 

Anon. An hymn.— Anthologia Hibernica, Dublin, 1793, i. 388-9. 

Kett, Henry. Translation of Jortin's poem on the nature of the soul.— 

Juvenile Poems, O.xford, 1793, pp. 31-40. 

■ Episode taken from a poem on the earthquake at Lisbon.— lb. 46-9. 

Robinson, Mary. Sight. — Sight, etc., 1793, pp. i-io. 

Solitude.— lb. 19-32. 

Smith, Charlotte. The emigrants, 2 books, 1793. 

Thorn, R. J. Retirement, Bristol, 1793.— See Crit. Rev., new arr., x. 

467-8. 
1793 w. Harley, G. D. Lines written at West Cowes. — Poems, 1796, pp. 114-16. 
Jones, John, bishop of Cork. Epistle to Archdeacon Moore. —R. Polwhele's 

Traditions and Recollections, 1826, i. 337-8. 

1793 w. 1796-7 p. Crowe, William. Verses to the duke of Portland. — Southey's 

Annual Anthology, Bristol, 1799, i. 112-14. 
1793-1800W. Robinson, Mary. The progress of liberty.— Poetical Works, 1806, iii. 

1-52. 
c. i793?-i828w. Southey, Robert. Inscriptions, i-xlv. — Poetical Works, 1837, iii. 
103-78. Seven inscriptions were not reprinted: Poems, 1797, pp. 55> 59; 
Letters written in Spain and Portugal, Bristol, 1797, pp. 270, 469-70; 
Annual Anthology, 1799, i. 67, i8r, 208. 

1794 Anon. The curate's caution. — Gent. Mag., Ixiv. 365-6. 
Anon. War, 1794. — See Mo. Rev., enl., xvi. 107-8. 

Beresford, James. The Aeneid, translated, 1794. — See ib. xviii. 1-12. 
BuRRELL, Sophia, Lady. The Thymbriad (from Xenophon's Cyropaedia), 

7 books, 1794. 
Cary, H. F. The mountain seat. — Gent. Mag., Ixiv. 161-2. 
Gisborne, Thomas. Walks in a forest, 3d ed., 1797. 
Harrison, Anthony. Apostrophe to Shakspeare. — The Infant Vision of 

Shakspeare, etc., 1794, pp. 9-10. 
Hurdis, James. Tears of affection, 1794. 
I. On history.— Anthologia Hibernica, 1794, iii- 135-7- 
Jennings, James. Lines written during a morning walk in August.— 

Europ. Mag., xxvi. 289. 
Scarisbing, F. S. Paraphrase upon the canticle, 'Benedicite, onmia opera 

Domini.' — Gent. Mag., kiv. 257-8. 
Thorn, R. J. Howe triumphant, or the glorious first of June, an heroic 

poem, 1794. — See Crit. Rev., new arr., xiii. 112. 
Warton, John. The complaint. — Poems, Salisbury, 1794, pp. 1-9- 
The vision of Moses.— Ib. 71-6. 

> 1793 Anon. Christmas, 1793. In blank verse: Crit. Rev., new arr., x. 229-30. Not seen. 



658 



BIBLIOGRAPHY I 



1794 w. , SouTHEY, Robert. Botany-Bay eclogues. — Poems, 1797, pp. 77-82; Mo. 

Mag., 1798, V. 41-2. 
Wrangham, Francis. The restoration of the Jews. — Cambridge Prize 

Poems, ii. 235-50. 
1794-6 w. PoLWHELE, Richard. The thunder. — Sketches in Verse, 1796, pp. 33-4. 

The pilchard-seine.— lb. 38-41. 

The village.— lb. 45-7. 

A winter evening scene.— Influence of Local Attachment, 1798, pp. 

62-3. 
A winter piece.— lb. 73. 

1795 Anon. A call to the country, 1795. — See Mo. Rev., enl., xviii. 91. 
Anon. Mensa regum, or the table of kings, 1795. — See Crit. Rev., new arr., 

xvi. 355-7- 
Bellamy, Thomas. The London theatres, 1795. 

CoRNHiLL, Sewell. The old serpentine temple of the Druids, Marl- 
borough, 1795. 
Fawcett, Joseph. The art of war, 1795. 
HucKS, Joseph. Upon the ruins of Denbigh castle.— A Pedestrian Tour 

through North Wales, 1795, pp. 46-7. 
HuRDis, James. Poem upon a prospect of the marriage of the prince of 

Wales, 1795. — See Crit. Rev., new arr., xvii. 264-8. 
Lettice, John. The immortality of the soul, translated from I. H. Browne, 

Camb.,1795. 

[Translation of a passage from Claudian.]— lb. 309-10. 

Smyth, Philip. The coffee-house, a characteristic poem, 1795.— See Crit. 

Rev., new arr., xiv. 232-3. 
Trollope, a. W. The destruction of Babylon. — Cambridge Prize Poems, 

ii. 251-61. 
1795-7 Cole, Thomas. The life of Hubert, a narrative, descriptive, and didactic 

■ poem, books i-iii, 1795-7. — See Mo. Rev., enl., xix. 136-9, xxv. 102-5. 
1795-1814 w. 1814 p. Wordsworth, William. The excursion. — Poetical Works, ed. 

W. Knight, 1896, vol. v. 
c. 1795 w. Opie, Amelia. An evening walk at Cromer [in] 1795. — Southey's Annual 

Anthology, 1800, ii. 13 1-3. 
c. 1795 w. 1802-97 p. Landor, W. S. The Phocaeans. — Poems, etc., ed. Crump, 1892, 

ii. 59-76; Letters and other Unpublished Writings, ed. Wheeler, 1897, 

pp. 136, 236-8; W. Bradley's Early Poems of Landor, a Study, 1914, 

pp. 113-21. 

1796 BiDLAKE, John. The sea, 2 books, 1796. 

Bishop, Samuel. The man of taste, in imitation of Milton.— Poetical 

Works, 1796: see Mo. Mirror, ii. 290-91.^ 
Courtier, P. L. The pleasures of solitude.— Poems, 1796, pp. 95-114. 

To the memory of Thomson.— lb. 115-16. 

Revolutions, 2 books, 1796. 

FiTCHETT, John. Bewsey, Warrington, 1796. — See New Annual Register, 

1796, pp. [167-8]. 
Graham, Charles. To the memory of James Thomson. — Gent. Mag., 

Ixvi. 1102-4. 
Harley, G. D. Address.— Poems, 1796, pp. 9-11. 

• Night.— lb. 26-107. 

Elegy on a Newfoundland dog. — lb. 120-33. 

The cat.— lb. 139-63. 

Lines, written at an inn.— lb. 166-9. 

Leander.— lb. 177-218 (error in pagination). 

1 Bishop's Preacher is also in blank verse, but whether Miltonic or not I do not know. 



POEMS INFLUENCED BY PARADISE LOST 659 

1796 Harley, G. D. a legacy of love.— lb. 219-95. 

,Lamb, Charles. The grandame.— Works, ed. Lucas, 1903, v. 5-6. 

The Sabbath bells. — lb. 9. 

Seward, Anna. Philippic on a modern epic— Works, i8io, iii. 67-9. 
Skene, George. Donald Bane, an heroic poem, 3 books, 1796.— See Mo. 

Rev., enl., xxiv. 49-56. 
^5ouTHEY, Robert. Joan of Arc, an epic poem, Bristol, 1796. 
Thomson, Alexander. The paradise of taste, 1796. — Contains some 

Miltonic blank verse: see Crit. Rev., new arr., xix. 129-37. 
v., T. (Thomas Vivian?). Description of Pandora, from Hesiod's Works 

and Days. — Essays by a Society of Gentlemen at Exeter, 1796, pp. 

432-3 n. 

The shield of Hercules, from Hesiod.— lb. 455-65. 

The shield of Achilles, from Homer.— lb. 466-73. 

Williams, William. Redemption, book i, 1796.— See Mo. Rev., enl., xxi. 

226-7. 

1797 AiKiN, A. L. (Mrs. Barbauld). Washing-day.— Works, 1825, i. 202-6. 
Anon. The castle of Olmutz, 1797. — See Crit. Rev., new arr., xx. 103-4. 
Anon. Lines on the failure of standing for a fellowship at college. — Gent. 

Mag.,lxvii. 238. 
Bolland, William. Miracles. — Cambridge Prize Poems, ii. 263-76. 
Brown, Robert. The campaign, 2 books, 1797. — See Crit. Rev., new arr., 

xxii. 472-3- 
Canning, George, and Frere, J. H. Inscription for the door of the cell 

in Newgate, where Mrs. Brownrigg was confined. — Poetry of the Anti- 
Jacobin, ed. C. Edmonds, 2d ed., 1854, p. 16. 
Dallas, R. C. Kirkstall abbey.— Miscellaneous Writings, 1797, pp. 1-15. 
DoNOGHUE, J. Juvenile essays in poetry, 1797. — See Mo. Rev., enl., xxiii. 

457-8. 
Gorton, John. Adam's morning hymn, imitated from Milton. — Gent. 

Mag., Ixvii. 965-6. 
Grahame, James. The rural calendar.— The Birds of Scotland, etc., Edin., 

1806, pp. 120-61. 
Jackson, John. Gils-land Wells. — Poems on Several Occasions, 1797: see 

Mo. Rev., enl., xxv. 237-8. 
N. Address to an old pair of boots newly tapped.— Mo. Mag., iii. 140. 
Sharpe, John. The church, 1797. — See Crit. Rev., new arr., xxi. 460-63. 
Southey, Robert. Retrospective musings.— Letters written in Spain and 

Portugal, 1797, pp. xvii-xx. 

[Lines on the widow of Villa Franca.]— lb. 63-5. 

[Translations from Lope de Vega's Hermosura de Angelica.]— lb. 135, 

137, i38-9» 141-2, 147-50. 152, 159- 
[Translations from Pedro de Tojal's Carlos Reduzido.]— lb. 333-4, 

336-7,338,340-1,343,350- 

Written after visiting the convent of Arrabida.— lb. 476-9. 

WiLCOCKE, S. H. Britannia, 1797. — See Mo. Rev., enl., xxiv. 454-7. 
1797 w. AiKiN, A. L. (Mrs. Barbauld). To Coleridge. — vVorks, 1825, i. 209-11. 
Southey, Robert. Recollections of a day's journey in Spain.— Works, 

1837,11.233-5. 
Thelwall, John. Lines written at Bridgewater.— Poems written in Re- 
tirement, Hereford, 1801, pp. 126-32. 

On leaving the bottoms of Glocestershire.- lb. 136-9. 

Maria.— lb. 142-4. 

1797-1812 w. 1805-14 p. Cary, H. F. The vision, or hell, purgatory, and paradise of 
Dante, translated, 2d ed., 3 vols., 1819. 




BIBLIOGRAPHY I 

bef. 1798 w. Marriott, John. The falling leaf.— A Short Account of John Marriott, 

etc., Doncaster, 1803, pp. 155-62. 
The vanity of expecting happiness, from superiour acquirements. 

— lb. 189-90. 
1798 Anon. Matriculation, 1798. — See Crit. Rev., new am, xxiv. 468-9. 

Booker, Luke. Malvern, a descriptive and historical poem, 3 books, 

Dudley, 1798. 
Bowles, W. L. On a beautiful spring. — Poetical Works, ed. G. Gilfillan, 

Edin., 1855, i. 98-9. 

Coombe- Ellen. — lb. 115-25. 

Cottle, Joseph. Malvern hills, 1798. 

Dyer, George. On taking leave of Arthur Aikin. — Poems, 1801, pp. 129- 

34- 

Addressed to the society for establishing a literary fund.— lb. 140-44. 

Fawcett, Joseph. To the sun; written in the spring. — Poems, 1798: see 

Mo. Rev., enl., xxviii. 274-5. 
Landor, W. S. Gebir. — Works, etc., ed. Forster, 1876, vii. 3-41. 
LoFFT, Capel. On seeing Mrs. Siddons in The Stranger. —Mo. Mag. , v. 443. 
PoLWHELE, Richard. To Miss S . Influence of Local Attachment, 

1798, ii. 57-8. 

1798 w. BoLLAND, William. The epiphany. — Cambridge Prize Poems, ii. 277-87. 

Elliott, Ebenezer. The vernal walk, 1801.— See Mo. Rev., enl., xxxv. 
109-110. 
c. 1 798-1838 w. 1808-42 p. Fitchett, John. King Alfred [2d ed.], 6 vols., completed 
and edited by Robert Roscoe, 1 841-2. 

1799 Booker, Luke. The hop-garden, a didactic poem, 2 books, Newport, 1799. 
A sequel-poem to the Hop-Garden.— lb. 75-106. 

Dyer, George. On visiting Fuseli's Milton gallery in Pall Mall.— Gent. 

Mag., Ixix. 509-10. 
Hildreth, W. The Niliad, an epic poem in honour of the victory o£[ the 

mouth of the Nile, 1799. — See Crit. Rev., new arr., xxv. 354-5. 
Lloyd, Charles. Lines suggested by the fast, Birmingham, 1799. 
M., J. Atys, or human weakness, 1799. — See Mo. Rev., enl., xxxiii. 428-9. 
Nason, George. Aphono and Ethina, including the science of ethics, 

3 cantos, Edin., 1799. — See ib. xxxii. 437-8. 
Thomson, Alexander. Pictures, 6, 7, 9. — Pictures of Poetry, Edin., 1799: 

see Crit. Rev. , new arr. , xxvii. 260-68. 
Thorn, R. J. Lodon and Miranda, Bristol, 1799. — See ib. 110-12. 
1799 w. BoLLAND, William. Saint Paul at Athens. — Cambridge Prize Poems, ii. 

289-97. 
— ^outhey, Robert. Madoc, 1805. 

1799 w. 1815 p. Cowper, William. Virgil's Aeneid, viii. 18 ff.— Poems, ed. Bailey, 

1905, pp. 625-34. 
1799-1805 w. 1850 p. Wordsworth, William. The prelude. — Poetical Works, 1896, 

iii. 121-380. 
bef. 1800 w. Warton, Joseph. Epistle from Thomas Hearne, antiquary. — Biographi- 
cal Memoirs, 1806, pp. 159-60. 

Verses on Dr. Burton's death.— Ib. 163. 

Verses spoken to the king by Lord Shaftesbury.— Ib. 163-4. 

1800 Anon. Kilda. — Gent. Mag., Ixx. 977. 

"Aurisco Geresteo (Fra Gli Arcadi)." Speech of Napoleon in Kassan- 
dra Pseudomantis, 1800. — See Crit. Rev., new arr., xxxi. 470. 

Brown, James. Britain preserved, 7 books, Edin., 1800. — See ib. 109-11. 

Case, William. Gorthmund, a tale in the manner of Ossian. — Southey's 
Annual Anthology, ii. 91-5. 



POEMS INFLUENCED BY PARADISE LOST 66 1 

1800 Case, William. Owen's grave.— lb. 186-8. 

Chamberlin, Mason. Equanimity, 1800. — See Mo. Rev., enl., xxxiii. 
429- 30. 

Harvest.— lb. 

Cottle, Joseph. Alfred, an epic poem, 24 books, 1800. 
Dyer, George. Homer's statue [translated from the Anthologia pub- 
lished by H. Stephens]. — Poems, 1801, pp. 53-5. 
HuRDis, James. The favorite village, Bishopstone, 1800. 
Mant, Richard. Verses to the memory of Joseph Warton, Oxford, 1800. 
Robinson, Mary. The Italian peasantry. — Mo. Mag., ix. 260-61. 
Sherive, C. H. On leaving Bristol Wells. — Southey's Annual Anthology 

ii. 243-6. 
Whitehouse, John. Hymn to the earth, etc., from Stolberg, 1800.— See 

Crit. Rev., new arr., xxxi. 348-9. 
Wordsworth, William. Inscription for St. Herbert's island [text of 1815]. 

— Poetical Works, 1896, ii. 210-13. 
Wrangham, Francis. The Holy Land. — Cambridge Prize Poems, ii. 299- 
314- 
c. 1800W. Seward, Anna. A meditation.— Works, 1810, iii. 317-18. 

Address to the river in a landscape.— lb. 334-7. 

Sotheby, William. Extracts from a manuscript poem on the elements.— 
Italy and other Poems, 1828, pp. 247-308. 
c. 1800 w. 1807 p. White, Henry Kirke. Commencement of a poem on despair.— 

Remains, ed. Southey, 5th ed., 1811, i. 358-60. 
c. 1800 w. 1888 p. Wordsworth, William. The recluse, book i, part i: Home at 

Grasmere. — Poetical Works, 1896, viii. 235-57. 
1801 Anon. The prostitute. — A Collection of Poems [ed. Joshua Edkins], Dublin, 

1 801, pp. 28-31. 
Bo ADEN, James. A rainy day, 1801. — See Crit. Rev. , new arr. , xxxv. 111-12. 
Broughton, Brian. Six picturesque views in North Wales, with poetical 
reflections, 1801. — See Mo. Rev., enl., xliv. 41-4. (Four "views" had 
been published in 1798.) 
Burges, James Bland. Richard the First, 18 books, 2 vols., 1801. — See 

ib. XXX vii. 287-91. 
Carlisle, Frederick Howard, Earl of. Naworth castle.— Tragedies and 

Poems, 1801, pp. 297-8. 
Chamberlin, Mason. Ocean, 1801. — See Mo. Rev., enl., xxxvi. 437-8. 
Dyer, George. The madman. — Poems, 1801, pp. 19-22. 

On visiting the tomb of David Hume.— Ib. 56-60. 

Monody on the death of Robert Robinson.— Ib. 182-6. 

Fox , William , Jr. La bagatella, or delineations of home scenery, a descrip- 
tive poem, 2 parts, 1801. — See Mo. Rev., enl., xxxviii. 188-90. 
Hunt, Leigh. Christ's hospital.— Juvenilia, 4th ed., 1803, pp. 17-25. 
Lardner, W. O. The college gibb, an heroic sketch.— A Collection of Poems 

[ed. Joshua Edkins], 1801, pp. 1-8. 
Ogilvie, John. Britannia, a national epic poem, 20 books, Aberdeen, 1801. 
Thelwall, John. Paternal tears [10 "effusions"].- Poems written in 

Retirement, 1801, pp. 145-63. 
Thompson, Gilbert. Select translations from the works of Homer and 
Horace, 1801. — See Crit. Rev., new arr., xxxvi. 107-8. 
1801 w. 1804 p. Herbert, William. Croylandabbey.— Works, 1842,1. pt.ii. 169-70. 

Written in Somersetshire.— Ib. 17 1-7. 

1801 w. Seward, Anna. Consolation.— Works, 1810, iii. 351-6. 
1 801-2 1 Thelwall, John. Specimens of the Hope of Albion, or Edwin of Northum- 
bria, an epic poem. — Poems written in Retirement, 1801, pp. 175-202; 
Poetical Recreations, 1822, pp. 117-24, 235-42. 



662 BIBLIOGRAPHY I 

1802 Anon. [" Fragment of "] The art of candle-making, a didactic poem in 

twenty books. — Europ. Mag., xlii. 424-6. 
Anon. Sketch of Bonaparte.— Mo. Mag., xiv. 53-4. 
CocKBURN, William. St. Peter's denial of Christ.- Cambridge Prize 

Poems, ii. 315-26. 
Dyer, George. To the memory of George Morgan. — Poems, 1802, i. 95- 

lOI. 

On the death of Gilbert Wakefield.— lb. 102-g. 

Landor, W. S. Chrysaor.- Works, etc., ed. Forster, 1876, vii. 456-63. 
M. The crooked sixpence, in imitation of Philips's "Splendid Shilling." — 

Gent. Mag., Ixxii. 446-7. 
Palmer, John. The creation and fall of man, 1802. — See Mo. Rev., enl., 

xl. 102. 
S., E. Inscription in a wood in Sussex. — Europ. Mag., xlii. 223. 

1802 w. Seward, Anna. Farewell to the seat of Lady Eleanor Butler. — Works, 

1810, iii. 345-50- 

1803 Alley, Jerome. The judge, 3 cantos, 1803. 

Anon. Bonaparte's soliloquy on the invasion of England, 1803.— See Crit. 

Rev., new arr., xxxviii. 471-2. 
Bayley, Peter. The delusions of love. — Poems, Philadelphia (U. S. A.), 

1804, pp. 165-94. 
Bowles, W. L. On a landscape by Rubens.— Works, 1855, i. 142-50. 
Cririe, James. Scottish scenery, or sketches of scenes in the highlands, 

1803. — See Mo. Rev., enl., xlvi. 14-20.^ 
Downman, Hugh. On taking the Ha vannah.— Infancy, etc., 1803, pp. 

207-11. 

On genius.— lb. 213-18. 

Edridge, Rebecca. The lapse of time, Uxbridge, 1803. — See Crit. Rev., 

new arr., xxxvii. 234-5. 
Flowerdew, Mrs. A. Poems on moral and religious subjects, 1803. — 

Contains some Miltonic blank verse: see Mo. Rev., enl., xliii. 438-9. 
Hollow ay, William. Scenes of youth. — Scenes of Youth, etc., 1803, pp. 

1-99. 
Kenney, James. Society, 2 parts, 1803. — See Mo. Rev., enl., xliv. 32-3. 
Lowe, John, Jr. [Lines from one of his poems.] — lb. xli. loo-ioi. 
"A Wrangler." Address to mathematics. — Gent. Mag., Ixxiii. 548-9. 
1803 w. Cockburn, William. Christ raising the daughter of Jalrus. — Cambridge 

Prize Poems, ii. 327-36. 
1803 w. 1805 p. Brydges, Egerton. Retirement. — Censura Literaria, 2d ed., 1815, 

X. 267-75. 

1803 w. 1815 p. Wordsworth, William. Yew-trees. — Poetical Works, 1896, ii. 369- 

74- 
c. 1803-6 w. 1807- p. White, Henry Kirke. "Yes, my stray steps have wander'd."— 

Remains, 1811, i. 189-91. 

Christmas-day.— lb. ii. 119-21. 

Nelsoni mors.— lb. 121-2. 

Time.— lb. 147-71. 

The Christiad.- lb. 173-93. 

"Drear winter! who dost knock."— lb. iii (1822), 89-90. 

1804 Blake, William. Milton, 2 books, 1804. — Prophetic Books: Milton, ed. 

E. R. D. Maclagan and A. G. B. Russell, 1907. 
Bowles, W. L. The spirit of discovery by sea.— Works, 1855, i. 225-94. 

' At least one of the "sketches" seems to have been published before: cf. ib. 15-16 (description of 
Loch Lomond) with the Bee, xv. 293 (June 26, 1793). This may be the same as the Address to Loch Lomond 
(1788, above). 



POEMS INFLUENCED BY PARADISE LOST 663 

1804 Brown, Thomas. The bard. — Poems, 1804: see Mo. Rev., enl., xlvi. 203-4. 

To my mother.— The Wanderer in Norway, etc., 2d ed., 1816, pp. 1-7. 

Musings during a night-walk.— lb. 143-60. 

E — TT, E. Inscription ii.— Mo. Mag., xvii. 146. 

Grahame, James. The Sabbath, 1804. 

Howard, Nathaniel. Bickleigh vale.— Bickleigh Vale, etc., York, 1804, 

PP- 1-37- 

An inscription for Lidford bridge.— lb. 11 7-18. 

Ireland ,W. H. ("Charles Clifford "). The angler, book i, 1804. 
Strange, T. A hint to Britain's arch enemy, Buonaparte, Henley, 1804.— 

See Mo. Rev., enl., xliii. 437. 
TiNDAL, William. The evils and advantages of genius contrasted, 3 cantos, 

1804. — See ib. xliv. loi. 
Whitfield, Henry. The Christmas holidays, 1804.^ — See ib. xlvi. 324. 
Wrangham, Francis. The raising of Jairus' daughter, 1804. 

1804 w. Herbert, William. To the memory of Thomas Brigstock.— Works, 1842, 

vol. i. pt. ii. 177-80. 
HoYLE, Charles. Moses viewing the promised land. — Cambridge Prize 

Poems, ii. 337-52. 
Thelwall, John. To Miss Bannatine. — Poetical Recreations, 1822, pp. 

219-21. 

1805 Barlow, John. Loss of the Earl of Abergavenny, East-Indiaman, Wey- 

mouth, 1805. 
Booker, Luke. Tobias, 3 parts, 1805. 

Bounden, Joseph. Fatal curiosity, or the vision of Silvester, 3 books, 1805. 
Good, J. M. The nature of things, a didactic poem, from Lucretius, 

2 vols., 1805. 
Peers, Charles. Christ's lamentation over Jerusalem. — Cambridge 

Prize Poems, ii. 353-63. 
R., W. Effusions to an English marigold. — Europ. Mag., xlviii. 307-8. 
Thelwall, John. The trident of Albion, an epic effusion, Liverpool, 1805. 

1805 w. Brown, Thomas. The renovation of India, Edin., 1808. 

1806 Grahame, James. The birds of Scotland.— The Birds of Scotland, etc., 

1806, pp. 1-86. 
— — Biblical pictures.— Ib. 87-119. 
"Hafiz." December. — Gent. Mag., Ixxvi. 1151-2. 
HoYLE, Charles. Paul and Barnabas at Lystra. — Cambridge Prize 

Poems, ii. 365-78. 
Shepherd, Richard. "Your caution, sacred Guide."— The New Boethius, 

2d ed., 1808, pp. 105-7. 
Thelwall, John. Monody on Charles James Fox, 1806. 
YoRKE, Philip, Viscount Royston. Cassandra, from Lycophron, Camb., 

1806. 

1807 Cumberland, Richard, and Burges, J. B. The Exodiad, 1807. 

Ford, Thomas. A token of respect to the memory of Archbishop Markham. 

— Gent. Mag., Ixxvii. 1049-50. 
Howard, J. J. The Metamorphoses of Ovid, 2 vols., 1807. — See Mo. Rev., 

enl., liv. 426-8. 
Howard, Nathaniel. The Inferno of Dante, translated, 1807. 
Hoyle, Charles. Exodus, an epic poem, 13 books, 1807. — See Edin. Rev., 

enl., xi. 362-70. 
Masters, Martin Kedgwin. The progress of love, Boston (U.S.A.), i8o8. 
Smith, Charlotte. Beachy head.— Beachy Head, etc., 1807, pp. 1-51. 
Sotheby, William. Saul, 2 parts, 1807. 

' In the same volume is another poem in blank verse, called Black Monday. 



664 BIBLIOGRAPHY I 

1808 Bayley, Catharine. Medicine, in imitation of Thomson. — Europ. Mag., 

liv. 218. 
Cottle, Joseph. The fall of Cambria, 25 books, 1808. 
Deare, J. R. The Georgics, translated, 1808. — See Quart. Rev., i. 69, 76-7. 
Noble, Thomas. Blackheath, a didactic and descriptive poem, 5 cantos, 
1808. 

Lucan's Pharsalia, i. 4475.— Lumena (appended to Blackheath), 

preface, p. iv. 

Lines composed on the bench at Dartmouth Point. — Miscellaneous 

Poems (appended ib.), 49-57. 

[Translation of a passage from "Orpheus."] — Argonautica of C. 

Valerius Flaccus (appended ib.), 110-112. 

Translation of Horace, book i, ode i: To Maecenas. — Academic 

Letters, 1808, pp. 135-6. 

Concluding address.— Ib. 174-6. 

Vincent, John. Fowling, 5 books, 1808. — See W. H. K. Wright's West- 
Country Poets, 1896, pp. 459-60. 
1809 Bowles, W. L. Pictures from Theocritus: from idyl xxii.— Works, 1855, 

i. 159-61. 

Southampton castle.— Ib. 164-6. 

Cadland, Southampton river.— Ib. 180-82. 

The sylph of summer. — Ib. 184-201. 

Avenue in Savernake forest.— Ib. 215-16. 

Sketch from Bowden hill.— Ib. 219-22. 

Grahame, James. Africa delivered. — Poems on the Abolition of the Slave 

Trade, by J. Montgomery, Grahame, and E. Benger, 1809, pp. 55-100. 
British georgics, Edin., 1809. 

1809 w. i8i4p. SouTHEY, Robert. Roderick, the last of the Goths.— Works, 1838, 

vol. ix. 

1810 Crawford, Charles. The palace of superstition. — Poems on Various 

Subjects, 3d ed., 1810, pp. 157-79. 
Thelwall, John. [Translation from the Aeneid, i. 81 ff.] — Vestibule of 
Eloquence, 1810, pp. 11 2-13. 
bef.i8iiw. AiKiN, A. L. (Mrs. Barbauld). Eternity.— Works, 1825, i. 230-31. 

1811 Webb, Francis. Somerset, 1811. 

1811W. AiKiN, A. L. (Mrs. Barbauld). On the king's illness.— Works, 1825, i. 

263-5- 

1812 DiBDiN, T. F. Bibliography, book i, 181 2. 

Elton, C. A. Hesiod's Theogony, translated.— Remains of Hesiod, 1812, 

pp. 65-133. 

Hesiod's Shield of Hercules.— Ib. 199-233. 

Hume, Joseph. Inferno, from Dante, 181 2. 

Ireland, W. H. Lines in imitation of Milton. — Neglected Genius, 181 2, 

pp. 111-12. 

1813 Walker, W. S. From the ninth book of Klopstock's Messiah. — Poetical 

Remains, ed. J. Moultrie, 1852, pp. 178-9. 

1814 Elton, C. A. Specimens of the classic poets, from Homer to Tryphiodorus, 

translated, 1814: i. 13-60, 77-84, 164-5, 221-2, 267-72, 283-91, 297-344, 
353-4,415-16; ii. 51-65,335-6; 111.9-36,203-36,293-4,315-27. 

LiCKBARROw, Isabella. To the muse. — Poetical Effusions, 1814, pp. 1-2. 

A fragment on solitude.— Ib. 3-5. 

Written early in spring.— Ib. 5-7. 

On music— Ib. 8-9. 

The naiad's complaint.— Ib. 9-11. 

The throne of winter.- Ib. 11-13. 

On sleep.— Ib. 13-15. 



POEMS INFLUENCED BY PARADISE LOST 665 

1814 LiCKB ARROW, Isabella. On sensibility.— lb. 15-17. 

■ Written at the commencement of the year 1813. — lb. 17-18. 

Invocation to peace.— lb. 19-20. 

On seeing some children playing.— lb. 20-22. 

1815 Cottle, Joseph. Messiah, 28 books, 1815. 

TowNSEND, George. Armageddon, books i-viii, 1815. — See Eclectic 

Rev., new series, iv. 392-5. 
Wordsworth, William. Written on Black Comb. — Poetical Works, 1896, 

iv. 281-2. 

1815 w. AiKiN, A. L. (Mrs. Barbauld). The first fire.— Works, 1825, i. 273-7. 

1816 Shelley, P. B. Alastor. — Complete Poetical Works, ed. T. Hutchinson, 

Oxford, 1904, pp. 15-33- 
1816 w. PoLLOK, Robert. Lines to Liza.— Life, by David PoUok, Edin., 1843, PP- 
20-21. 

1816 w. 1820 p. Wordsworth, William. "A little onward lend thy guiding hand." — 

Poetical Works, 1896, vi. 132-5. 

1817 Drummond, Sir William. Odin, part i, 1817. 

Pennie, J. F. The royal minstrel, or the witcheries of Endor, an epic poem, 

12 books [2d ed.], 1819. 
1817W. 1820 p. Wordsworth, William. ToLycoris[secondpoem]. — Poetical Works, 

1896, vi. 149-52. 
c. i8i7?w. PoLLOK, Robert. The distressed Christian to his soul.— Life, by David 

Pollok, 1843, pp. 413-15- 

1818 MiLMAN, H. H. Samor, lord of the bright city, an heroic poem. — Poetical 

Works, 1839, ii. 1-296. 
1818-19W. 1820 p. Keats, John. Hyperion, a fragment. — Poems, ed. E. de Selin- 
court, 2d ed., 1907, pp. 207-27. 

1819 w. 1856 p. The fall of Hyperion, a dream. — lb. 229-40. 

1819 w. Snart, Charles. The angler's day.— Appended to Observations on 

Angling in the River Trent, 2d ed., Newark, 1819 (an unpublished manu- 
script in the Fearing collection. Harvard Library). 

Drummond, W. H. Clontarf , 2 books, Dublin, 1822. 

[Five] poetical sketches.— lb. 65-83. 

1820 Drake, Nathan. [Translation from Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered.] — 

Winter Nights, 1820, ii. 120-30. 
Wordsworth, W. The haunted tree. — Poetical Works, 1896, vi. 199-201. 

1820 w. 1870 p. Shelley, P. B. Fragment: Milton's spirit.— Poetical Works, 1904, 

P- 705- 

1820? w. 1903 p. Fragment: Pater omnipotens.— lb. 

1820-22 Thelwall, John. Sympathy and poesy. — Poetical Recreations, 1822, pp. 
14-18. 

Sylvanus.— lb. 77-84. 

Thoughts and remembrances.— lb. 86-90. 

Hymn to Alauda.— lb. 95-6. 

The champion's address.- lb. 128-31. 

Ottarof roses.— lb. 131-2. 

On the approach of spring.— lb. 132-3. 

1821 Byron, George Gordon. Cain, a mystery. — Poetical Works, ed. E. H. 

Coleridge, 1905, pp. 624-52. 
S., A. [From Lucan's Pharsalia.] —John Thelwall's Poetical Recreations, 
1822, pp. 203-8. 

1822 Bowles, W. L. The grave of the last Saxon.— Works, 1855, ii. 77-141. 
Herbert, William. The Guahiba.— Works, 1842, vol. i. pt. ii. 47-74- 
Wordsworth, William. Processions. — Poetical Works, 1896, vi. 363-71. 

1822 w. PoLLOK, Robert. [Lines composed while walking.] —Life, by David Pollok, 
1843, pp. 139-49. 



666 BIBLIOGRAPHY I 

1823 Pennie, J. F. Rogvald, an epic poem, 12 books, 1823. 

Swan, Charles. The false one, 3 cantos. — Gaston, or the heir of Foiz, 
1823, pp. 133-228. 
c. 1823-4W.? PoLLOK, Robert. To melancholy.— Life, by David PoUok, 1843, PP- 
442-4. 
■ Liberty. -lb. 450-53- 

1825 AiKiN, A. L. (Mrs. Barbauld). Inscription for an ice-house. — Works, 

1825,1.188-9. 

The caterpillar.— lb. 278-80. 

• On the death of the Princess Charlotte.— lb. 281-2. 

Fragment.— lb. 311-12. 

GoMPERTz, Isaac. Devon, 1825.- See Wright's West-Country Poets, 

1896, p. 210. 

1826 Anon. The Messiah, by Klopstock, translated, 2 vols., 1826. 
Carrington, N. T. Dartmoor, a descriptive poem, 1826. 

Pennie, J. F. The artist.— Death's Doings, ed. R. Dagley, 2d ed., 1827, 
ii. 53-8. 

1826 w. Wordsworth, William. Composed [on] a probability of being obliged to 

quit Rydal Mount. — Poetical Works, 1896, viii. 289-95. 

1827 Address to Kilchurn castle.— lb. ii. 400-403. 

PoLLOK, Robert. The course of time, 10 books, 7th ed., Edin., 1828. 

1827 w. Montgomery, Robert. The crucifixion. — Poetical Works, 1854, pp. 

614-16. 

1828 Shadows of death.— lb. 547-59. 

• A vision of heaven.— lb. 560-62. 

■ A vision of hell.— lb. 563-6. 

Universal prayer.- lb. 567-73. 

Bowles, W. L. Days departed, or Banwell hill, 1828. 
Moore, William. Carnbrea. — Poetic Effusions, 1828: see Wright's West- 
Country Poets, 344-5. 
1828 w. Southey, Robert. Epistle to Allan Cunningham. — Works, 1837, iii. 
303-18. 
Montgomery, Robert. London by midnight.— Works, 1854, pp. 593-5. 

1830 Satan.— lb. 323-85. 

Spirit of time.— lb. 604-6. 

Phillips, William. Mount Sinai, 4 books, 1830. 

1831 Campbell, Thomas. Lines on the view from St. Leonards. — Complete 

Poetical Works, ed. J. L. Robertson, Oxford, 1907, pp. 288-92. 
MosBY, J. N. Mount Sion.— The Fall of Algiers, etc., Doncaster, 1831, 

PP- 359-418. 
Venables, G. S. The north-west passage.— Cambridge Prize Poems, new 

ed. , 1847, pp. 241-9. 

1831 w. 1835 p. Wordsworth, William. Apology for the foregoing poems. — Poetical 

Works, 1896, vii. 309-10. 

1832 Brydges, Egerton. The lake of Geneva, 2 vols., Geneva, 1832. 
Montgomery, Robert. The Messiah.— Works, 1854, pp. 453-532. 

1833 w. The departed year.— lb. 609-12. 

1833 Wall, W. E. Christ crucified, an epic poem, 12 books, Oxford, 1833. 

1834 Elliott, Ebenezer. Great folks at home.— The Splendid Village, etc., 

1834,1.129-37. 

Wharncliffe.— lb. 245-61. 

Roscoe, W; S. Fragments of "The Contemplative Day." — Poems, 1834, 

pp. 128-58. 

From the Messiah of Klopstock.— lb. 159-95. 

Smith, William. Solitude, 4 cantos, 1834. 



POEMS INFLUENCED BY PARADISE LOST 667 

183s Alford, Henry. The school of the heart.— The School of the Heart, etc., 

Cambridge, 1835, vol. ii. 
Drummond, W. H. The pleasures of benevolence, 1835. 

MiTFORD, John. Lines to . Prefixed to Poetical Works of Matthew 

Prior, Aldine ed., 1835. 
1835 w. Campbell, Thomas. The dead eagle.— Works, 1907, pp. 300-303. 

1837 w. 1842 p. Wordsworth, Willl\m. Musings near Aquapendente. — Poetical 

Works, 1896, viii. 42-57. 

1838 Bowles, W. L. St. John in Patmos.— Works, 1855, ii. 143-220. 
Herbert, William. Attila, king of the Huns, 12 books, 1838. 

1838 w. Time.— Works, 1842, vol. i. pt. ii. 167-9. 

c. i838?w. Bowles, W. L. The ark.— Works, 1855, ii. 315-17. 
On the death of Dr. Burgess.— lb. 320-21. 

1839 Bailey, Philip James. Festus, 50th anniversary' ed., 1889. 

1839 w. Montgomery, Robert. A dream of worlds.- Works, 1854, pp. 607-8. 

1842 Luther. -lb. 173-288. 

1843 Moultrie, John. The dream of life. — Poems, ed. D. Coleridge, 1876, i. 

353-462. 

1844 Hawkins, Thomas. The wars of Jehovah, in heaven, earth, and hell, 9 

books, 1844. — See Quart. Rev., xc. 333, 352-5. 

1845 Harris, W. R. Napoleon portrayed, an epic poem, 12 cantos, 1845.— See 

ib. 333,345-8. 
Henry, James. The Eneis, books i and ii, rendered into blank iambic, 1845. 
bef.1846 w. Walker, W. S. Fragment. — Remains, 1852, pp. xlviii-xlLx. 

To B. H. Kennedy.-Ib. 41-2. 

Judas Maccabeus, in imitation of Milton.— Ib. 94-100. 

Horace, i. 22, imitated.— Ib. 157-8. 

Written at the close of a college examination.— Ib. 159. 

Scene from Aeschylus.- Ib. 167-8. 

Fragments from Ennius.—Ib. 169-72. 

1846 Herbert, William. The Christian, book i.— Supplement to Works, 1846, 

PP- ^-3Z- 
Montgomery, Robert. Scarborough.— Works, 1854, pp. 581-4. 
Sewell, William. The Georgics, literally and rhythmically translated, 

1846. — See Quart. Rev., ex. 106-7.^ 

1848 AiRD, Thomas. Frank Sylvan.— Poetical Works, 4th ed., Edin., 1863, pp. 

17-34- 
Monkwood.— Ib. 76-81. 

1849 BxjRGES, George. The Aias of Sophocles, translated, 1849. 
Kennedy, Rann, and C. R. The works of Virgil, 1849. 

1850 Bailey, Philip James. The angel world.— The Angel World, etc., Boston 

(U. S. A.), 1850, pp. 1-77. 

1851 Montgomery, Robert. Wordsworth.— Works, 1854, pp. 588-9. 

1852 Clifford, C. C. Prometheus chained [from Aeschylus], Oxford, 1852. 
MoiR, D. M. The angler. — Poetical Works, ed. T. Aird, 1852, ii. 352-61. 
The tombless man.— Ib. 361-71. 

Hymn to the night wind.— Ib. 377-83. 

1853 Reynolds, S. H. The ruins of Egyptian Thebes, Oxford, 1853. 

1855 Bailey, Phillp James. The mystic— The Mystic, etc., 1855, pp. 1-62. 

A spiritual legend.— Ib. 63-135. 

Henderson, Thulia S. Olga, or Russia in the tenth century, 1855. 
1855-9 Singleton , R . C . The works of Virgil , closely rendered into English rhythm , 
2 vols., 1855-^. 

> Sewell, Wh-lmm. Agamemnon, translated literally and rhythmically, 1846; also Odes and epodes 
of Horace, translated literally and rhythmically, 1850. Not seen; may be in blank verse. 



668 BIBLIOGRAPHY I 

1859-64 Wright, I. C. The Iliad, translated, 2 vols., Camb. , etc., 1861-5. 

1861 Kennedy, Charles Rann. The works of Virgil, 1861. 

1862-4 Derby, Edward Stanley, Earl of . The Iliad, 2 vols., 1864. 

1865 MiLMAN, H. H. [Translation from Onomacritus?] —The Agamemnon of 

Aeschylus, etc., 1865, pp. 245-7. 
MusGRAVE, George. The Odyssey, 2 vols., 1865. 
Plumptre, E. H. The tragedies of Sophocles, 2 vols., 1865. 
1865-73 SwANWiCK, Anna. The dramas of Aeschylus, 4th ed., 1890. 

1866 Bickersteth, E. H. Yesterday, to-day, and for ever, 12 books, 4th ed., 

1870. 

1868 Plumptre, E. H. The tragedies of Aeschylos, 2 vols., 1868. 

1869 Edginton, G. W. The Odyssey, 2 vols., 1869. — See Westminster Rev., 

new series, xxxvi. 644. 
Moon, G. W. Eden. — Eden and other poems, 2d ed., 1869, pp. 1-26. 
Witt, E. E. The fifth and ninth books of the Odyssey, 1869. 

1871 King, Henry. The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Edin., 1871. 
RiCKARDS, G. K. The Aeneid, books i-vi, Edin., 1871. 

1872 Ravensworth, Lord. The Aeneid, books vii-xii [book xi by G. K. 

Rickards], Edin., 1872. — See Lond. Quart. Rev., xl. 126-8. 

1877-84 Green, W. C. The Iliad, with a verse translation, books i-xii, 1884. 

1877-1908 MoRSHEAD, E. D. A. [Aeschylus:] The house of Atreus (Agamemnon, 
Libation-bearers, and Furies), 2d ed., 1889; The suppliant maidens, the 
Persians, the Seven against Thebes, and the Prometheus bound, 1908. 

1883 Campbell, Lewis. Sophocles, the seven plays, 1883. 

Whitelaw, Robert. Sophocles, translated, 1883. 

1886 Myers, Ernest. The judgment of Prometheus. — Gathered Poems, 1904, 

PP- 3-15- 

The Olympic Hermes.— lb. 41-6. 

Thornhill, W. J. The Aeneid, freely translated, Dublin, 1886. 

1889 w. De Vere, Aubrey. Death of Copernicus.— Mediaeval Records and Son- 

nets, 1893, pp. 195-211. 

1890 Campbell, Lewis. Aeschylus, the seven plays, 1890. 

1891 Bridges, Robert. Eden, a dramatic oratorio in three acts, 1891. 
1893 Rhoades, James. The Aeneid, books i-vi, 1893. 

1896 Ridley, Edward. The Pharsalia of Lucan, 10 books, 1896. 

1903 Baughan, B. E. Reuben. — Reuben, etc., 1903, pp. 9-45. 
The two ships.— lb. 67-70. 

1904 BiNYON, Laurence. The death of Adam.— The Death of Adam, etc., 1904, 

pp. 1-25. 
1906 Blane, William. Creation.— The Silent Land, etc., 1906, pp. 89-123. 

1908 Doughty, Charles M. Adam cast forth, 1908. 

L, NoYES, Alfred. The last of the Titans.— The Golden Hynde, etc., N. Y., 

1908, pp. 54-66. 
1915 Phillips, Stephen. Armageddon, a modern epic drama, 1915. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY II 

POEMS INFLUENCED BY L'ALLEGRO AND 
IL PENSEROSO 

1647 Baron, Robert. Erotopaignion, or the Cyprian academy, 1648. 

1 69 7? Hughes , John . Horace , book i , ode xxii , in paraphrase . — Poems on Several 

Occasions, 1735, i. 113-15. 
1699 Addison, Joseph. An ode for St. Cecilia's day.— Works, Bohn ed., vi. 

S34-S- 

1702 w. 1709 p. Hughes, John. Horace, book ii, ode xvi, in paraphrase.— Poems, 
1735, i. 116-20. 

1704 w. A thought in a garden.— lb. 171-3. 

1714 Parnell, Thomas. A h^mn to contentment. — Poems on Several Occasions, 

1722, pp. 158-63. 

1716 RowE, Nicholas. Ode for the new year, 1716. 

bef.i7i8w. Parnell, Thomas. Health, an eclogue. — Poems, 1722, pp. 116-21. 

1 718 HiNCHLiFFE, William. The seasons. — Collection of Poems, Amorous, 

Moral, etc., 1718, pp. 37-67. 

bef.1720 w. Hughes, John. The picture. — Poems, 1735, i. 74-6. 

1723 Baker, Henry. An invocation of health, 1723. 

1723 w. 1727 p. Broome, William. Melancholy, an ode. — Poems on Several Occa- 
sions, 2d ed., 1739, pp. 26-31. 

1725 w. 1729 p. Thomson, James. Hymn on solitude.— Works, ed. Robertson, 

Oxford, 1908, pp. 429-30. 

1726 Dyer, John. The country walk.— Miscellaneous Poems and Translations, 

ed. Richard Savage, 1726, pp. 48-57. 

Grongar hill. — Poems, 1761, pp. 9-16. 

1729 Hughes, John. Supplement to Milton's II Penseroso. — Poems, 1735, vol. i, 

p. Iviii. 

1731 Anon. II penseroso. — A Miscellany of Poems, ed. J. Husbands, Oxford, 

i73i,pp. 161-9. 

1732 DoDSLEY, Robert. [Song in] An entertainment for the wedding of Gov- 

ernour Lowther.— The Muse in Livery, 1732, pp. 66, 72. 
Green, Matthew. The grotto. — A Collection of Poems by Several Hands 
[Dodsley's Miscellany], 1758, v. 159-68. 
<^- 1733? w. Swept, Jonathan. Odeonscience.— Works, ed. Walter Scott, 2ded.,Edin., 

1824, xiv. 323-5. 
1736 Browne, I. H. Imitation vi.— A Pipe of Tobacco, in Imitation of Six 

Several Authors, 1736, pp. 21-3. 
L., E. Contentment. — Gent. Mag., vi. 615. 
Thomson, James. "Come, gentle god."— Works, 1908, p. 424. 

1738 w. West, Richard. View from the thatcht house. — Correspondence of Gray, 

Walpole, West, etc., ed. P. Toynbee, Oxford, 1915, i. 191-5. 
c. 1738W. 1742 p. Collins, William. Oriental eclogues: eclogue the first. — Poems, 
ed. W. C. Bronson, Boston (U. S. A.), 1898, pp. 12-13. 

1739 Akenside, Mark. Hymn to science. — Poetical Works, Aldine ed., 1835, 

pp. 293-6. 
Hamilton, William, of Bangour. Ode i. To fancy. — Poems and Songs, ed. 

J. Paterson, Edin., 1850, pp. 47-51. 

Ode ii. — lb. 51-3. 

On the new year mdccxxxix.— lb. 58-60. 

669 



670 BIBLIOGRAPHY II 

c. 1739 w. 1747 p. Hamilton, William, of Bangour. Contemplation, or the triumph 
of love.— lb. 34-47. 

1740 Jennens, Charles. II moderator — Georg Friedrich Handel's Werke, 

Leipzig, 1859, vi. 11-12 (of text). 

1 741 Brooke, Henry. Constantia, or the Man of Law's Tale.— George Ogle's 

Canterbury Tales of Chaucer Modernis'd, 1741, ii. 104-195. 

1742 w. West, Richard. Ode [to May].— Mason's Memoirs of Gray (prefixed to 

Gray's Poems, York, 1775), pp. 147-8. 
1742 w. 1753 p. Gray, Thomas. Hymn to adversity. — English Poems, ed. D. C. 

Tovey, Camb., 1898, pp. 8-9. 
1743? Mallet, David. A fragment.— Works, new ed., 1759, i- 49~53- 

1744 w. Blackstone, Sir William. The lawyer's farewel to his muse.— Dodsley's 

Miscellany, 1755, iv. 228-32. 
1744 w. 1748 p. Mason, William. II pacifico.— Works, 1811, i. 166-71. 

1744 w. 1771 p. II bellicoso. — lb. 158-65. 

bef.i74S w. Warton, Thomas (the elder). Retirement.— Poems, 1748, pp. 13-16. 

An ode, written in a grotto.— lb. 1 15-18. 

Ode to sleep.— lb. 162-6. 

1745 Akenside, Mark. Ode vi. Hymn to cheerfulness.— Works, 1835, pp. 

157-62. 
Anon. Ode to May. — Lond. Mag., xiv. 252. 
Davies, Sneyd. To the spring.— John Whaley's Collection of Poems, 1745, 

pp. 229-32. 
DoDSLEY, Robert. [Two airs in] Rex et pontif ex.— Trifles, 1745, p. 12. 
C.1745? w. Chapone, Hester M. To health.— Works, 1807, iv. 152-4. 

Cowper, William, M.D. II penseroso, an evening's contemplation in St. 
John's churchyard, Chester, 1767. 

1746 Anon. A hymn to liberty, 1746. 

Anon. Ode, occasion'd by his royal highness's victory. — Gent. Mag., xvi. 

267. 
Anon. To superstition, an ode.— The Museum, or Literary and Historical 

Register [Dodsley's Museum], 1746, i. 55-6. 
Anon. Ode to pleasure.— lb. ii. 50-51. 
Collins, William. Ode to fear.- Poems, 1898, pp. 36-9. 

Ode on the poetical character.— lb. 41-3. 

The manners, an ode. — lb. 56-8. 

Cooper, J. G. The estimate of life, in three parts: i, Melpomene [the 

melancholy]; ii. Calliope [the cheerful]; iii , Terpsichore [the moderate].— 

Dodsley's Museum, 1746, i. 372-9. 
Hoadly, Benjamin. The trophy, cantata vi: The religious.- Dodsley's 

Miscellany, 1748, iii. 264-5. 
Warton, Joseph. Ode i. To fancy. — Odes on Various Subjects, 1746, pp. 

S-ii- 

Ode iii. To health.-Ib. 16-18. 

Ode iv. To superstition.— lb. 19-21. 

Ode vi, Against despair. — lb. 26-9. 

Ode xi. To a lady who hates the country.— lb. 38-40. 

Ode xii. On the death of [his father].— lb. 41-3. 

Ode xiv. To solitude. — lb. 46-7. 

1747 "Philo." Ode to hope. — Gent. Mag., xvii. 536. 

1748 Anon. Advice to Mr. L n, the dwarf fan-painter, 1748. 

"Craftsman." Hymn to May. — Gent. Mag., xviii. 229. 

Frank, J. "Daughter of Him, at whose command." — Gratulatio Acad. 
Cantab, de Reditu . . . Georgii JI post Pacem . . . Restitutam, Camb., 
1748, Ee, verso. 



POEMS INFLUENCED BY THE OCTOSYLLABICS 67 1 

1748 Maseres, F. "Janus, shut thy brazen gate."— lb. V, verso. 

Otway, Fr[ancis?]. "Come hither, all ye fair and gay."— lb. Q, verso. 

1748 w. P., Rev.Mr. L'amoroso, in imitation of Milton's L' Allegro.— Poetical 

Calendar, ed. Fawkes and Woty, 1763, vii. 100-105. 

1749 Anon. Epithalamic ode for music — Scots Mag., xi. 494. 

1750 A., S. Ode to piety.— The Student, or Oxfgrd and Cambridge Monthly 

Miscellany, Oxford, 1750, i. 31-2. 
Anon. To fancy.— lb. i 13-14. 
Anon. Ode to taste. — Four Odes, 1750, pp. 17-32. 
Coventry, Francis. Penshurst.— Dodsley's Miscellany, 1755, iv. 50-61. 

1750 w. 1777 p. Warton, Thomas (the younger). Ode vii, Sent to a friend on his 

leaving a favourite village.— Works, ed. Mant, Oxford, 1802, i. 156-67. 
c. 1750 w. Macpherson, James. Death. — Poems of Ossian, Edin., 1805, ii. 443-61. 

1751 "Chimaericus Oxoniensis." Ode to horror.— The Student, ii. 313-15. 

1752 Anon. Another [ode] . — Escapes of a Poetical Genius, 1752, pp. 19-20. 
Anon. Contemplation.— Lond. Mag., xxi. 188, 233-4, 283-4. 

Anon. Ode.— lb. 332. 

H.,Mr. Ode to fancy. — lb. 377-8. 

Smart, Christopher. The introduction: being two odes, the former on 

good-nature, the latter against ill-nature.— Poems on Several Occasions, 

1752, pp. 1-6. 
Idleness: ode vii.— lb. 19-20. 

1752 w. Keate, George. A pastoral ode to echo. — Poetical Works, 1781, i. 53-5. 

1753 Anon. Ode to health. — Scots Mag., xv. 76. 

Anon. A hymn to contentment, in imitation of Gray's Hymn to Adversity. 

-lb. 518. 
Anon. Rus : an imitation of Milton's measure in L' Allegro and II Penseroso. 

— Lond. Mag., xxii. 571-2. 
Warton, Thomas (the younger). Ode xi, On the approach of summer.— 

Works, 1802, ii. 1-37. 
Werge, John. Rural happiness. — Collection of Poems, Stamford, 1753, 

pp. 21-2. 

1754 Blacklock, Thomas. To health, an ode. — Poems, 3d ed., 1756, pp. 73-4. 
BowDEN, Samuel. Ode to echo. — Poems, Bath, 1754, pp. 42-3. 
Miller, John. To Mira. — Poems on Several Occasions, 1754, pp. 49-50. 
Ode composed for the Sober Society.— lb. 139-44. 

1755 Anon. St. Mungo's in Glasgow. — Scots Mag., xvii. 195. 

B-LL-E, Dr. Hymn to contentment. — Collection of Original Poems, 

by Samuel Derrick, 1755, pp. 180-81. 
Farmer, Richard. "Haste, young-eyed May!" — Carmina ad Nobilissi- 

mum Thomam Holies, Camb., 1755, pp. 27-8. 
Grainger, James. Solitude, an ode. — Dodsley's Miscellany, 1755, iv. 

233-43- 
Hall-Stevenson, John. Hymn to Miss Laurence in the pump-room at 

Bath, 1755. 
KtDDELL, H. The genius of Milton, an invocation. — Gent. Mag., xxv. 518. 
Marriott, Sir James. Ode to fancy.— Dodsley's Miscellany, 1755, iv. 

294-300. 
Merrick, James. Ode to fancy.— lb. 185-9. 

1756 Anon. Epistles to Lorenzo, 1756. — See Mo. Rev., xvi. 226-30. 
Anon. Ode to melancholy. — Scots Mag., xviii. 75. 

1757 Woty, William. On musick.— Shrubs of Parnassus, 1760, pp. 138-41. 

1758 Anon. Ode to sleep. — Scots Mag., xx. 419-20. 
Anon. To peace. — Gent. Mag., xxviii. 329. 

Anon, Vacation.— Dodsley's Miscellany, 1758, vi. 148-54. 



672 BIBLIOGRAPHY II 

1 758 Langhorne, John. Le sociable, partly in the manner of Milton. — Poetical 

Works, ed. T. Park, 1806, ii. 5-6. 

1759 Airy, Harriot. Ode to truth. — Gent. Mag., xxix. 538. 
B., G. Ode to health.— lb. 334. 

CoLMAN, George, and Lloyd, Robert. Two odes: i, To obscurity; ii, 

To oblivion. — Colman's Prose on Several Occasions, 1787, ii. 273-83. 

WoTY, William. Ode to friendship.— Shrubs of Parnassus, 1760, pp. 73-5. 

1 759 w. DoDD, William. An ode occasioned by Lady N — d's being prevented from 

coming to Magdalen house. — Poems, 1767, pp. 148-52. 
bef.i76ow. 1768 p. Browne, I. H. Ode to health.— A Collection of Poems in Four 
Volumes, by Several Hands [Pearch's Supplement to Dodsley], new ed., 
1783,11.312-14. 

1760 Anon. Spring; from the Italian. — Scots Mag., xxii. 89. 

Anon. Ode to sleep; intended as a chorus in a tragedy.— lb. 315. 
Cooper, E. Hymn to learning.— A Collection of Elegiac Poesy, etc., 1760, 

pp. 85-8. 
Glasse, J. Quantock-hill.— Lond. Mag., xxix. 316. 

Steele, Anne. Ode to content.— Works, Boston (U.S A.), 1808, i. 191-3. 
Solitude.— lb. 283-5. 

1760 w. DoDD, William. Hymn to good-nature. — Poems, 1767, pp. 1-7. 

1 761 Anon. Ode to health. — Scots Mag., xxiii. 97. 
Anon. Ode to solitude. — Gent. Mag., xxxi. 38. 

Anon. A soliloquy in a thatch'd house.— Lond. Mag., xxx. 499. 

Cooke, John. "Ill-boding Fears away." — Gratulatio Acad. Cantab. . . . 

Georgii HI . . . Nuptias celebrantis, Camb., 1761, P. 
Langhorne, John. Hymeneal. — Chalmers's English Poets, xvi. 461, 

A hymn to hope, 1761. 

"Library." To sleep. — Scots Mag., xxiii. 263. 

Lloyd, Robert. Arcadia, or the shepherd's wedding, a dramatic pastoral, 

1761. 
PooLEY, W. "Hence Melancholy, pensive maid."— Epithalamia Oxonien- 

sia, 1761, L2, verso. 
ScoTT, James. On pleasure.— Odes on Several Subjects, Camb., 1761, pp. 

31-6. 

On despair.— lb. 37-42. 

To wisdom.— lb. 43-7. 

Shepherd, Richard. Ode x, To health.— Odes Descriptive and Allegorical, 

i76i,pp. 32-8. 

Ode xi, To hope.— lb. 39-46. 

Thomas, B. "Hence to shades of blackest night."— Gratulatio Acad. 

Cantab., etc., 1761, Gg. 
Tyson, Michael. "Hence pale Grief and anxious Care."— lb. Y. 

1 761 w. DowNMAN, Hugh. Ode occasioned by the coronation. — Poems, 2d ed., 

Exeter, 1790, pp. 50-59. 

1762 Carter, Elizabeth. Ode to melancholy. — Poems on Several Occasions, 

1762, pp. 79-83. 
Churchill, Charles. The ghost, 1762. 
Earle, W. B. "Hither all ye fairy powers." — Gratulatio Solennis Univ. 

Oxon. ob . . . Walliae Principem . . . Natum, Oxford, 1762, U2, verso. 
Fawkes, Francis. On occasion of the peace. — Chalmers's English Poets, 

xvi. 277-8. 
Grove, William. "Hail Euterpe, nymph divine." — Gratulatio Solennis 

Univ. Oxon., etc., 1762, X, verso. 
NoTT, Samuel. "Hither, swains! who, whistling blythe."— lb. S, verso. 
Ogilvie, John. Ode to sleep. — Poems on Several Subjects, 1762, pp. 23-8. 



POEMS INFLUENCED BY THE OCTOSYLLABICS 673 

1762 Ogilvie, John. Ode to evening.— lb. 29-35. 

Ode to innocence. — lb. 36-7. 

Scott, James. Hymn to repentance. — Cambridge Prize Poems, i. 137-45. 
1762 w. Scott, John, of Amwell. Ode to leisure. — Poetical Works, 1782, pp. 165-9; 
cf. Europ. Mag., xxxvi. 400. 

1762 w. 1773 p. More, Hannah. [Three songs and an ode in] The search after happi- 

ness.— Works, 1830, i. 261-3, 273-4, 287-8. 

1763 Anon. Contemplation, an ode. — Poetical Calendar, 1763, vi. 7-8. 
Anon. Rodondo, or the state-jugglers, canto ii: Resignation. — Scots Mag., 

XXV. 499-504. 
Brown, Dr. John. The cure of Saul, a sacred ode, 1763. 
D., J. Farewell to hope. — Poetical Calendar, X. 73-4. 
Hartis, C. T. An ode.— lb. vii. 106-8. 
Hudson, Rev.Mr. Ode ii, To fancy.— lb. vi. 26-9. 
Panting, Stephen. Elegy iv. Midnight.— lb. viii. 31-4. 
S., Dr. Ode on spring. — Scots Mag., xxv. 346-7. 
Thompson, William. Garden inscriptions, i: In II Spenseroso, on Spenser's 

Faerie Queene. — Poetical Calendar, viii. 97. 
Travis, George. "Hence, monster. War! — hence to the wasted plains!" 

— Gratulatio Acad. Cantab, in Pacem . . . Restitutam, Camb., 

1763, Y. 
Tyson. Michael. "The gayly-gilded stream of light."— lb. Z, verso. 

1763 w. Langhorne, John. Inscription in a sequestered grotto. — Poetical Works, 

1789, p. 46. 
bef.1764 w. Lloyd, Robert. To the moon. — Chalmers's English Poets, xv. 149-50. 

1764 "Caledonius." Ode to peace. — Scots Mag., xxvi. 96. 
■ Ode to mirth. — lb. 394. 

"Prometheus." Hymn to melancholy.— Lond. Mag., xxxiii. loi. 

1764 w. Victor, Benjamin. Ode xi. For the queen's birthday.— Original Letters, 

etc., 1776, iii. 138-41. 

1765 Anon. Landscape: an August evening. — Scots Mag., xxvii. 154-5. 

1766 Anon. Rural pleasure.— Lond. Mag., xxxv. 649. 

Anstey, Christopher. Letter iii. The birth of fashion, a specimen of a 
modern ode.— New Bath Guide, 3d ed., 1766, pp. 22-8. 

Letter ix, A journal.— lb. 61-8. 

Fowler, B, To solitude, in imitation of Milton. — Gent. Mag., xxxvi. 427. 
Jenner, Charles. Ode to modesty. — Poems, Camb., 1766, pp. 24-5. 
M., J. Ode to content.— Lond. Mag., xxxv. 431. 

1767 Anon. (Miss Vanhomrigh?). Ode to spring. — Gent. Mag., xxxvii. 183. 
DoDD, William. The man of Southgate.— Poems, 1767, pp. 79-81. 
Ode to the marchioness of Granby.— lb. 140-47. 

1767 w. DowNMAN, Hugh. Sonnet i, "Hence Sickness." — Poems, 1790, p. 74. 
1768? Ode. -lb. 101-3. 

Ode.— lb. 103-6. 

1768 H., Mr. Ode to taste. — Pearch's Supplement, 1783, i. 145-54- 

1769 Anon. Ode to sleep.— Town and Country Mag., i. 104. 

Gray, Thomas. Ode for music— English Poems, 1898, pp. 76-9. 
Ogilvle, John. An Aeolian ode. — Poems on Several Subjects, 1769, ii. 
277-86. 

1769 w. Warton, Thomas (the younger). Ode iv, Solitude at an inn.— Works, 

1802, i. 140-41. 

1770 Anon. Ode to solitude.— Lond. Mag., xxxix. 589. 

Marriott, Dr. (Sir James?). The valetudinarian, an ode. — Pearch's 

Supplement, 1783, iv. 1-8. 
"MusAEUS." An ode. — Scots Mag., xxxii. 672. 



674 



BIBLIOGRAPHY II 



1770 Parsons, Philip. Inscription in an arbour. — Pearch's Supplement, 1783, 

iii. 277-8. 
WoTY, William. On retirement.— Works, 1770, ii. 151-5. 

1770 w. Lyttelton, Thomas, Lord. An irregular ode. — Poems, 1780, pp. 24-8. 

Preston, William. The sirloin. -Poetical Works, Dublin, 1793, i. 185-93. 

The fire-side.— lb. 195-7. 

bef.1771 w. Smollett, Tobias. Ode to mirth. — Plays and Poems, 1777, pp. 250-52. 
Ode to sleep.— lb. 253-4. 

1771 Anon. Ode to health.— Lond. Mag., xl. 654-5. 

Foot, James. Penseroso, or the pensive philosopher, 6 books, 1771. 
Jemmat, Catharine. To Mr. Mason, on his Elf rida.— Miscellanies, 1771, 

pp. 156-8. 
PoRDEN, W. The debauchee.— Town and Country Mag., iii. 158. 

1772 Anon. Contentment. — Scots Mag., xxxi v. 38. 

Anon. Ode to peace.— Weekly Mag., or Edinburgh Amusement, xv. 179. 

1773 AiKiN, A. L. (Mrs. Barbauld). Hymn to content. — Poems, 1773, pp. 53-6. 
To wisdom.— lb. 57-8. 

Anon. Ode on her majesty's birth-day.- Gent. Mag., xliii. 39. 

Anon. True picture of a debauchee.— Town and Country Mag., v. 48. 

Anon. "Hence ye unwholesome smells."— lb. 437. 

Fergusson, Robert. Ode to hope.— Works, ed. Grosart, 1851, pp. 150-1. 

Green, Henry. To content, an ode.— Lond. Mag., xlii. 459. 

1774 Anon. Ode spoken by Lt. Col. Pennington, to the soldiers.- Scots Mag., 

xxxvi. 255. 

M., W. (William Mason?). Mirth, a poem, in answer to Warton's Pleas- 
ures of Melancholy, 1774. 

Richardson, William. Hymn to virtue. — Poems, chiefly Rural, 1774, 

PP- 3-4- 

■ On winter.— lb. 14-15. 

The relapse, an idyllion.— lb. 22-3. 

Hymn to the muse.— lb. 24-7. 

Hymn to health.— lb. 28. 

To health, an idyllion. — lb. 33-4. 

The invitation. — lb. 36. 

Hymn to solitude.— lb. 37-9. 

To mirth, an idyllion.— lb. 40-41. 

S., H. To pleasure.— Town and Country Mag., vi. 270. 

1775 Anon. The beauties of nature compared with those of art. — Poetical 

Amusements at a Villa near Bath, ed. Lady A. R. Miller, 3d ed., 1776, 

i. 118-22. 
Anon. The month of May.— lb. iox-3. 
Bampfylde, C. W. The month of April.— lb. 47-9. 
Burgess, .... The second opening of the Tusculum vase.— lb. 89-93. 
C-ss-ns, .... Ode to the elegiac muse.— lb. 139-42. 
G-v-l, Mrs. First of May.— lb. 105-7. 
Hall, J. Ode to fancy.— Town and Country Mag., vii. 158. 
Nugent, Robert. Epistle to PoUio.— Memoir by Claud Nugent, Chicago, 

etc., 1898, pp. 151-3- 
Penrose, Thomas. Madness. — Flights of Fancy, 1775, pp. 15-22. 
P-m-t-n, Lord Viscount. Beauty. — Poetical Amusements, 1776, i. 52-7. 

1776 Anon. May-day.— Town and Country Mag., viii. 271. 
Anon. Ode to charity. — Poetical Amusements, 1776, ii. 27-31. 
Anon. To hope.— lb. 79-81. 

. Anon. Harmony.— lb. 82-7. 

Davis, Miss. On the powers of harmony.— lb. 95-7. 

G&AVES, Richard. On calumny. — Euphrosyne, 1776, pp. 110-12. 



POEMS INFLUENCED BY THE OCTOSYLLABICS 675 

1777 Anon. The garrulous man, a parody upon L'AUegro of Milton, Bath, 1777, 
Anon. Ode for the king's birthday.— Univ. Mag., Ix. 322. 

Anon. On the tyranny of custom. — Poetical Amusements, 1777, iii. 160-63. 

"Goblin." Rhapsody to taste. — Gent. Mag., xlvii. 39. 

Ryan, Everhaiu). The genealogy of winter. — Reliques of Genius, 1777: 

see Mo. Rev., Ivii. 231-2. 
St. John, John. Garrulity. — Poetical Amusements, 1777, iii. 63-9. 
Whitehead, William. Ode for his majesty's birth-day. — Poems, York, 

1788, iii. 93-5. 

1777W. Meyler, William. Ode to health. — Poetical Amusement on the Journey 
of Life, Bath, 1806, pp. 106-9. 

1778 Lemoine, H. Ode to contemplation.— Lond. Mag., xlvii. 569-70. 

1778 w. Seward, Anna. Ode to Euphrosyne.— Works, 1810, i. 161-4. 
bef.1779 w. Langhorne, John. Inscription in a temple of society. — Poetical Works, 

1789, p. 45- 

Song, "*Tis o'er, the pleasing prospect's o'er."— lb. 66. 

Hymn to the rising sun.— lb. 164. 

1779 Alves, Robert. Malevolence, an ode. — Scots Mag., xli. 379. 
Anon. Ode to distress. — Poetical Effusions, 1779, pp. 36-41. 

Mason, William. Ode xii. To the naval officers of Great Britain.— Works, 
1811, i. 59-62. 

1779 w. Grant, Anne. Ode to Hygeia. — Poems, Edin., 1803, pp. 331-3. 

1780 Anon. Apostrophe to peace. — Scots Mag., xlii. 607. 
M. Odetohealth.- lb. 492. 

Walters, John. Song to the birds.— Poems, Oxford, 1780, pp. 91-6. 

1781 Anon. The celestial beds, 1781.— See Crit. Rev., li. 473-4. 

Anon. Ode to the genius of scandal, 1781. — See Mo. Rev., Ixvi. 235-6. 
Farren, Miss. Song.— Univ. Mag., Ixviii. 39. 

Jones, Sir Willlam. The muse recalled, an ode.— Works, 1807, x. 381-8. 
PiNKERTON, John. Ode ii, To peace.— Rimes, 2d ed., 1782, pp. 99-100. 

Ode X, L'ozioso.— lb. 130-42. 

Potter, Robert. Ode to sympathy.— Poetical Amusements, 1781, iv. 

II 2-1 7. 

Ode to health.— lb. 118-23. 

Rogers, Miss. Thalia, or invocation of the comic muse.— lb. 98-100. 
Seward, Anna. Invocation of the comic muse: prize poem at Bath-Easton. 

—Works, 1810, ii. 22-4. 

1782 Alves, Robert. Ode to wisdom. — Poems, Edin., 1782, pp. 40-42. 
Rural happiness, an ode.— lb. 57-62. 

Anon. To health.— Univ. Mag., Ixx. 320. 

Anon. Ode to melancholy.— J. Nichols's Collection of Poems, viii. 62-4. 

Pennant, Thomas. Ode to indifference.— lb. 229-30. 

Pinkerton, John. To laughter.— Two Dithyrambic Odes, 1782: see Crit. 

Rev., liv. 234-5. 
Stevens, W. B. Ode to health. — Poems, 1782, pp. 30-35. 

1783 Anon. Invocation to fancy.— Univ. Mag., lx.xii. 103. 
Y. Address to meditation.— Lond. Mag., enl., i. 130. 

1784 Bradbury, Samltel. Ode to virtue. — Gent. Mag., liv. 935. 
HuRN, William. The blessings of peace, 1784. 

Robertson, David. L'inamorato.- Poems, Edin., 1784: see Crit. Rev., 
Iviii. 70. 
1784 w. Blamire, Susanna. Address to health. — Poetical Works, Edin., 1842, pp. 
72-7. 
Smith, Sir W. C.(?) Hymn to health.— The Anonymous, 1810, ii. 319-22. 
bef. 1 785 w. Hall-Stevenson, John. Vacation.— Works, 1795: see Crit. Rev., new 
arr., xviii. 319-21. 



676 



BIBLIOGRAPHY II 



1785 Anon. To spring.— Univ. Mag., Ixxvi. 156-7. 

Anon. No. vii, Irregular ode. — Probationary Odes for the Laureatship 

1785, PP- 30-34- 
BoscAWEN, William. No. xi, "By Michael Angelo Taylor."- lb. 46-9. 
Brydges, Egerton. Ode ii, Upon beginning the study of the law. — 

Sonnets, etc., 1785, pp. 20-22. 

Ode iv. To spring. — lb. 26-31. 

BuRGOYNE, General. No. xvii. Irregular ode for music — Probationary 

Odes, 1785, pp. 73-83- 
Enys, Dorothy. Address to simplicity. — Gent. Mag., Iv. 787. 
FiTZPATRiCK, Richard. No. xv, Pindaric. — Probationary Odes, 1785, pp. 

63-7- 
Greatheed, Bertie. Ode to duel.— The Florence Miscellany, Florence 

(Italy), 1785, PP- 103-4. 

Ode on apathy.— lb. 129-31. 

Hayley, William. Ode to Mr. Wright of Derby. — Poems and Plays, new 

ed., 1788, i. 141-7. 
Merry, Robert. Ode to indolence.— The Florence Miscellany, 51-4. 

To Bacchus, dithyrambick.— lb. 154-8. 

To Diana, dithyrambick. — lb. 159-62. 

II viaggio.— lb. 196-202. 

La dimora.— lb. 203-8. 

Pratt, S. J. Landscapes in verse. — Sympathy, etc., 1807, pp. 75-118. 
TiCKELL, Richard. No. ix. Ode.— Probationary Odes, 1785, pp. 39-42. 

1786 "A Lady." Address to simplicity. — Scots Mag., xlviii. 245. 

Anon. [Two travesties on Gray's Installation Ode.]— New Foundling 

Hospital for Wit, new ed., 1786, iv. 144-58. 
Anon. Inscription for a bench beneath a favourite tree.— lb. vi. 42. 
Greville, Mrs. A prayer to indifference.— lb. 126-9. 
Nugent, Robert. Epistle to the earl of Chesterfield.— lb. i. 63-5. 
Parsons, William. Ode to sleep. — Univ. Mag., Ixxix. 43. 

1787 Anon. Ode to darkness. — Europ. Mag., xi. 286. 
"Arley." To ill-nature. — Poetry of the World, 1788, ii. 24-7. 
Merry, Robert. Diversity. — British Album, Boston, 1793, pp. 224-40. 
"Nerva." Invocation to melancholy. — Europ. Mag., xi. 452. 
Whitehouse, John. Ode to superstition.- Poems, 1787, pp. 31-6. 
Ode to melancholy.— lb. 47-51. 

Yearsley, Ann. Ode on the reconciliation between his majesty and the 
prince of Wales. — Univ. Mag., Ixxx. 369-70. 

1787 w. 1792 p. MawbeYj Joseph. Ode, written at Tunbridge Wells. — Gent. Mag., 

Ixii. 748. 

1788 Anon. Written on the near prospect of a place. — Europ. Mag., xiv. 224. 
C, G. Autumn.— lb. 473. 

Gary, H. F. To inspiration. — Sonnets and Odes, 1788, pp. 41-5. 
Davies, Edward. Ode to the muse.— Vacunalia, 1788: see Grit. Rev., Ixvi. 

230-31. 
Moody, Elizabeth. On youth.— Gent. Mag., Iviii. 636. 
P.,W. Ode to chearfulness.- lb. 444-5. 
Reid, W. H. Ode to reflexion.— lb. 636. 
TuRNBULL, Gavin. Morning. — Poetical Essays, Glasgow, 1788, pp. 75-87. 

Evening.— lb. 89-99. 

Ode i. To melancholy.— lb. 151-2. 

Ode iv. To innocence.— lb. 159-60. 

1789 Anon. To peace.— New Lond. Mag., v. 646. 
Butt, Dr.T. Ode to fun. — Gent. Mag., lix. 1034-5. 



POEMS INFLUENCED BY THE OCTOSYLLABICS 677 

1789 "Glanville." Ode to hope. — Poetry of the World, 1791, iii. 28-31. 
^^'■■■-~ Graves, Richard. Ode on caprice. — Scots Mag., li. 342-3. 

1790 Anon. Ode to superstition. — See New Annual Register, 1790, pp. [160-62]. 
Bentley, Elizabeth. Ode to content. — Gent. Mag., Ix. 1167-8. 

bef.1791 w. Blacklock, Thomas. Ode to Aurora. — Poems, Edin., 1793, pp. 200-201. 
Oram, S. M. Ode to friendship. — Poems, 1794, pp. 24-8. 

1791 Adney, Thomas. Ode to health. — Europ. Mag., xx. 143-5. 
Anon. Hymn to humanity.— Univ. Mag., Ixxxix. 391. 

Anon. On happiness, after the manner of Milton, translated.— The Bee, 

vi. 307 (Dec. 28, 1791). 
Blackett, Mary D. Ode to poetry. — Europ. Mag., xx. 224. 
HuDDEsroRD, George. Illusions of fancy. — Salmagundi, 1791, pp. 1-19. 

Whitsuntide.— lb. 65-7. 

Christmas.— lb. 69-71. 

" JxrvENTUS." Address to evening.— Gent. Mag. , Ixi. 68. 

L D, T. Invocation to sympathy.— lb. 260-61. 

Moore, J. Ode to liberty.— lb. 72. 

Robinson, Mary. Ode to the muse. — Poetical Works, 1806, i. 81-6. 

Ode to reflection.— lb. 97-9. 

Ode to envy.— lb. 100-103. 

Ode to health. -lb. 104-8. 

Ode to melanchol)'.- lb. 1 14-16. 

Ode to meditation.— lb. 143-7. 

1791W. 1834P. Coleridge, S. T. Music— Complete Poetical Works, ed. E. H. 
Coleridge, Oxford, 191 2, i. 28. 

1792 "Albert." Verses written in midsummer. — Walker's Hibernian Mag., 

Aug., 1792, p. 183. 

Anon. Clara (first song), in New songs in the opera The Prisoner.— lb., 
Nov., p. 472. 

Anon. Hymn to health.— Univ. Mag., xci. 370. 

DowNMAN,HuGH. To candour. — Poems by Gentlemen of Devonshire and 
Cornwall, Bath, 1792, i. 30-31. 

Dyer, George. To pity. — Poems, 1801, pp. 187-91. 

Hole, Mr. [Richard?]. To melancholy. — Poems by Gentlemen of Devon- 
shire, etc., i. 86-94. 

Z., X. Address to the evening.— Walker's Hibernian Mag., Oct., 1792, p. 
376. 
1792 w. SouTHEY, Robert. To contemplation.— Works, 1837, ii. 132-4. 

1792 w. 1895 p. Coleridge, S. T. To disappointment.— Works, 1912, i. 34. 

1793 Anon. L'allegro.— The Looker-On, no. 53 (in British Essayists, Boston, 

U. S. A., 1857, xxxvi. 219-22). 
Anon. Invocation to patience. — Univ. Mag., xciii. 69. 
Anon. Invocation to praise.— Asylum for Fugitive Pieces, 1793, iv. 125-6. 
BuRRELL, Sophia, Lady. L'allegro.— Poems, 1793, ii. 239. 
"Eusebius." Ode to rage.— Univ. Mag., xcii. 289. 
Robinson, Mary. Ode to hope.— Works, i8q6, i. 164-7. 
bef.1794 w. Blamire, Susanna. The farewell to aEEection.— Works, 1842, pp. 46-9. 

The recall to affection.— lb. 49-51. 

Hope.— lb. 148-53. 

1794 Anon. Ode to sleep. — Univ. Mag., xcv. 119-20. 
"Eusebius." Ode to envy.— lb. xciv. 442-3. 
"Horatio." Ode to despair. — Europ. Mag., xxvi. 437-8. 
Locke, Miss. The visionary. — Gent. Mag., Ixiv. 67-8. 

1795 Moore, Henry. Private life. — Poems, 1803, pp. 144-53. 
Porter, Anna Maria. Address to summer.— Univ. Mag., xcvi. 369. 



678 



BIBLIOGRAPHY II 



1796 "Castor." Ode to vengeance. — Europ. Mag., xxix. 201-2. 

Courtier, Peter L. The triumph of freedom. — Poems, 1796, pp. 50-53. 

To night.-Ib. 56-61. 

D., D. W. Ode to hope. — Europ. Mag., xxx. 120. 

Pertect, Dr. To solitude. — Gent. Mag., Ixvi. 863-4. 

Shepherd, T. R. Ode to melancholy.— lb. 600. 

W. , Anne Maria. Lines on a young lady's recovery from illness. —Walker's 
Hibernian Mag., Sept., 1 796, pp. 277-8. 
1796 w. BoscAWEN, William. Ode iii, For the anniversary meeting of subscribers 
to the literary fund. — Poems, 1801, pp. 39-45. 

1796 w. 1804 p. Smith, E. F. Ode to melancholy. —Europ. Mag., xlix. 444-5. 

1797 Anon. Address to melancholy.— Univ. Mag., c. 438-9. 
J., E. S. To despondency. — Scots Mag., lix. 841. 

Park, Thomas. The summer invitation. — Sonnets, etc., 1797, pp. 51-5. 
Smyth, William. Ode to mirth.— English Lyrics, 3d ed., 1806, pp. 39-45. 

1798 "An English Jacobin." Ode to Jacobinism.— Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, 

ed. C. Edmonds, 2d ed., 1854, pp. 105-7. 
W.,W. A. Ode to peace;— Hezekiah, King of Judah, 1798: see Mo. Rev., 
enl.,xxviii. 351. 
bef.1800 w. Warton, Joseph. The temple of love.— Biographical Memoirs, ed. J. 
Wooll, 1806, pp. 91-5. 

1800 Wakefield, Gilbert. Address to peace.— Mo. Mag., x. 438. 

c. 1800 w. Hardinge, George. To the winds.— Miscellaneous Works, 1818, ii. 173. 
c. 1800 w. 1807 p. White, Henry Kirke. Thanatos.— Remains, ed. Southey, 5th ed., 
i8ii,i. 363-4. 
Athanatos.— lb. 364-5. 

1801 Anon. II luttuoso ed il gaudioso, il giocoso ed il diligente, 1801. 
Preston, William. Hymn to old age.— A Collection of Poems [ed. Joshua 

Edkins], Dublin, 1801, pp. 305-10. 

Thelwall, John. [Songs in] The fairy of the lake. — Poems written in Re- 
tirement, Hereford, 1801, pp. 51-2. 
bef.i8o2 w. Moore, Henry. A vernal ode. — Poems, 1803, pp. 1-5. 

A lyric rhapsody.— lb. 6-10. 

Ode to religion.— lb. 59-62. 

Invocation to melancholy. — lb. 91-6. 

Ode to wisdom. — lb. 97-101. 

1802 B — , J — . Idyllium to mirth. — Gent. Mag., Ixxii. 256. 

"Senned." Greenwich park, or Whitsun Monday.— Europ. Mag., xli. 
385-7. 

1803 HoLLOWAY, William. Adieu and recal to poetry. — Scenes of Youth, etc., 

1803, pp. 131-49- 

"Sabinus." II romito, or the hermit. — Europ. Mag., xliv. 300-301. 
W., J. Peace of mind.— lb. 136. 
c. 1803-6 w. 1807- p. White, Henry Kirke. Ode on disappointment. — Remains, 
1811,1.35-8. 

To contemplation.— lb. ii. 73-9. 

Ode to liberty.— lb. iii. (1822), 114-16. 

1804 Drake, Nathan. To fancy.— Literary Hours, 3d ed., 1804, iii. 175-7. 
Elton, C. A. The mistress. — Poems, 1804: see New Annual Register, 

1804, pp. [266-7]. 

H — E, W. On melancholy. — Scots Mag., Ixvi. 219. 

Howard, Nathaniel. The rural evening.— Bickleigh Vale, etc., York, 
1804, pp. 52-6. 

To meditation; written near a Gothic church.— lb. 72-3. 

To horror.— lb. 110-14. 



POEMS INFLUENCED BY THE OCTOSYLLABICS 679 

1804 Richards, George. To autumn. — Poems, Oxford, 1804, ii. 33-6. 
To prosperity. —lb. 64-6. 

1805 Anon. Ode to spring.— Gent. Mag., Ixxv. 559-60. 

Richardson, William. Address to meditation. — Poems and Plays, new 
ed., Edin., 1805, i. 11-13. 

Hymn to melancholy. — lb. 79-86. 

• Hymn to friendship. — lb. 133-8. 

c. 1805 w. Struthers, John. To content. — Poetical Works, 1850, ii. 185-7. 

1806 Anon. Ode to war. — Gent. Mag., Ixxvi. 750. 

Austin, W. Ode to amusement. — Europ. Mag., xlLx. 373. 
Becket, Andrew. [Choruses in] Socrates.— Dramatic and Prose Miscel- 
lanies, ed. W. Beattie, 1838, i. 272. 

1807 Field, Barron. La ciriegia, an austere imitation of Milton's L' Allegro.— 

The News, March 20, 1807. 

1808 C. ( JosiAH CoNDERS?) . To forgetfulness.— The Associate Minstrels, 2d cd., 

1813, pp. 179-84. 

1809 To cheerfulness.— lb. 168-74. 

Bowles, W. L. Inscription. — Poetical Works, ed. Gilfillan, Edin., 1855, 
i. 155-6. 

1810 w. Struthers, John. Lines for the 25th of January, 1810.— Works, 1850, ii. 

199-200. 

1811 Stanzas for the anniversary of the birth of Burns.— The Winter Day, 

etc., Glasgow, 1811, pp. 93-6. 

1812 Dyer, George. On peace. — Poetics, 1812, i. 124-30. 
1814 N., H. Ode to enthusiasm.— Mo. Mag., xxxvi. 522-3. 

Twiss, Horace. Fashion, a paraphrase of L' Allegro. — Posthumous Paro- 
dies, etc., 1814, pp. 3-12. 
1818 BowiCK, James. The genius of poetry, Montrose, 1818. 

1820 Keats, John. Fancy. — Poems, ed. E. de Sehncourt, 2d ed., 1907, pp. 

198-200. 

1821 Clare, John. Solitude. — Poems, ed. A. Symons, 1908, pp. 75-84. 

1822 Wordsworth, William. To enterprise.- Poetical Works, ed. Knight, 

1896, vi. 218-24. 

1824 Shelley, P. B. To Jane: the invitation.— Poetical Works, ed. Hutchinson, 

Oxford, 1904, pp. 748-9. 

1825 AiKiN, A. L. (Mrs. Barbauld). Lines over a chimney-piece.— Works, 

1825, i. 147. 
1832 Motherwell, William. Melancholye. — Poetical Works, ed. James 

M'Conechy, Paisley, etc., 1881, pp. 67-70. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY III 

POEMS INFLUENCED BY THE REMAINING 
WORKS OF MILTON' 

A. POEMS INFLUENCED BY LYCIDAS 

1729 Browne, Moses. Eclogue v, Colin's despair, an imitation of Lycidas.— 

Piscatory Eclogues, 1729, pp. 74-86. 

1737 w.'' West, Richard. Monody on Queen Caroline.— Dodsley's Miscellany, 1748, 
ii. 276-81. 

1744 w. 1747 p. Mason, William. Musseus, a monody [on] Pope, in imitation of 
Lycidas.— Works, 1811, i. 1-15. 

1747 Lyttelton, George, Lord, To the memory of a lady lately deceased, a 

monody, 1747. 

1751 Image, John. "Ah me! the luckless chime."— Acad. Cantab. Luctus in 

Obitum Frederici . . . Walliae Principis, Camb. , 1751, X. 

1753 Werge, John. An irregular ode on the death of Charles Broome.- Collec- 

tion of Poems, Stamford, 1753, pp. 51-4. 

1755 Halliday, Dr. Brutus, a monody to the memory of [William] Bruce, 1755. 

— See Mo. Rev., xiv. 351-6. 

1759' Potter, Robert. Kymber, a monody, 1759. 

1763 Scott, James. The redemption, a monody, Camb., 1763. 

1765 w. 1770 p. Bruce, Michael. Daphnis, a monody.— Works, ed. Grosart, Edin., 

1865, pp. 230-34. 
1767 Scott, James. The vanity of human life, a monody, 1767. 

c. 1769 w. Seward, Anna. Monody on Mrs. Richard Vyse.— Works, Edin., 1810, i. 

104-7. 
1 771 w. Anon. Ode on the death of Gray.— Works of Gray, with Memoirs by 

William Mason, 1827, pp. 434-5- 
1774 Anon. Monody [on] Mr. Cholwell, in imitation of Lycidas, 1774. 

1777 Maurice, Thomas. Monody [on] Elizabeth, duchess of Northumberland. 

— Poems, Epistolary, Lyric, etc., 1800, pp. 109-15. 

Warton, Thomas (the younger). Monody, written near Stratford upon 
Avon.— Works, ed. Mant, O.xford, 1802, i. 63-7. 

1778 Anon. A monody (after the manner of Lycidas) on Mr. Linley, 1778.— 

See Crit. Rev., xlvi. 316. 

1779 Pratt, S. J. The shadows of Shakespeare, a monody [on] Garrick, 2d ed., 

Bath, 1780 (?). 
Sheridan, Elizabeth ("T. B."). On the death of my unfortunate brother. 

— Gent. Mag., xlix. 608; also Iv. 56. 

1785 w. Dermody, Thomas. Cory don, a monody.— Life, with Original Poetry, by 

J. G. Raymond, 1806, i. 6-9. 

1786 Damer,John. Elegy on the death of a lady.— New Foundling Hospital for 

Wit, new ed., 1786, i. 254-8. 
1790 "Wartophilus." On Mr. [Thomas] Warton. — Gent. Mag., Ix. 648-9. 

1790 w. 1794 p. Coleridge, S. T. Monody on Chatterton.— Works, ed. E. H. 

Coleridge, Oxford, 191 2, i. 13-15, 125-31. 

1 Except sonnets: cf. Bibliography IV. 

2 1743-6 Stillingfleet, Benjamin. Monody [on] Lord Henry Spenser: MS. in the British Museum. 

Not seen. 
' 1762 Lambe, Thomas. (?) Lycidas, a masque, 1762. Not seen. 

680 



INFLUENCE OF LYCIDAS AND COMUS 68 1 

1791 Bowles, W. L. Monody, written at Matlock, Salisbury, 1791. 
CarRjW.W. The muse, a monody [on] Shenstone. — Poems, 179 1, pp. 1-28. 
HuDDESFORD, George. Monody on Dick, an academical cat. — Salmagundi, 

1791, pp. 129-47. 

1792 "Alpin." Eliza. — Europ. Mag., xxi. 69-70. 

1798 Anon. Sidney, a monody, 1798. — See Crit. Rev., new arr., xxv. 230-31. 

1800 Bowles, W. L. Monody on Dr. Warton.— Works, ed. Gilfillan, Edin., 

1855, i- 135-41- 

1834 RoscoE, W. S. Monody. — Poems, 1834, pp. 40-48. 

1850 Fane, Julian. Monody on the queen dowager. — Poems which have ob- 

tained the Chancellor's Gold Medal, Camb., i860, pp. 293-300. 

1919 O'Brien, Kathleen. Mary Jane, ex-munition worker, demobilized, 

speaks.— Littell's Living Age, cccii. 188. 

Monodies that owe little or nothing to Lycidas except the name were written by 
Edmund Smith (Thales, a Monody in imitation of Spenser, 1751, composed before 
1710); Thomas Blacklock (Poems, 1754, pp. 107-124); Thomas Denton (1755, Dods- 
ley's Miscellany, 1758, v. 226-38); anonymous writers, Scots Mag. (1758, 1815), xx. 
20, Ixxvii. 536, and Mo. Mirror (1797), iv. 108-9, i77""8; John Langhorne (1759-69, 
Chalmers's English Poets, xvi. 432, 458, 459); John Hoole (on Mrs. Woffington, 
1760); anonymous authors (on George II, 1760, and the Duke of Cumberland, 1765); 
Cuthbert Shaw (on a "young lady," 1768, and to a nightingale, 1770); R. B. Sheridan 
and William Meyler (both on Garrick, 1779, and see Poetical Amusements near Bath, 
1781, iv. 75-9); Anna Seward (on Garrick and Andre, 1781, Works, 1810, ii. 15-17, 68- 
88); G. D. Harley (on John Henderson of Covent Garden theater, 1786); "Delia 
Crusca" (Poetry of the World, 1788, i. 76-9); Andrew M'Donald (Miscellaneous 
Works, 1791, pp. 52-4); "R. B. S[heridan?]" and W. H. Reid (1791, Scots Mag., liii. 
339, 444-5), and "H." (on James Grahame, 1811, ib. Ixxiii. 934); Joseph Cottle (on 
John Henderson of Bristol, in Cottle's Poems, Bristol, 1795); Richard Polwhele (Poetic 
Trifles, 1796, pp. 23-6); William Roscoe (1796, Currie's edition of Burns, 1800, i. 337- 
42); George Dyer (Poems, 1802, i. no, ii. 229); John Leyden (1802, from the Arabic, 
Poetical Remains, 1819, pp. 233-9); John Thelwall (on the Princess Charlotte, 1817, 
Poetical Recreations, 1822, pp. 48-9), and a broadside on Princess Charlotte, signed 
"M." (181 7); Mrs. Robinson (Works, 1806, i. 56, 246, iii. 53); Joseph Blackett (Kirke 
White's Remains, 1811, i. 311-14); W.H. Ireland (on William Cavendish, 1811); W. A. 
Bryson (Poems, Dublin, 181 2, pp. 59-65); Byron (on Sheridan, 1816); John Taylor 
(181 7 and 1821, Poems, 1827, ii. 225-6, 235);F. Mayne (Poems, Dover, i8i8,pp. 5-13); 
William Beattie (on Campbell, 1844); Ebenezer Elliott (on Keats, in Elliott's Works, 
1876, ii. 182-3). See also Bibl. I, 1757 (Andrews), 1786 (Knipe), 1787 (anon.), 1801 
(Dyer), 1806 (Thelwall). 

I have not seen Richard Rolt's monody on the Prince of Wales (1751), or the anon- 
ymous ones mentioned in the Critical Review, xxviii. 71 (1769), xxxi. 74 (1771). Ivii. 
153 (1784), or those on a young lady who died at Bath (Bath, 1778) and J. P. Kemble 
(1823), or T. Harral's on John Palmer (1798), Dennis Lawler's on the Due d'Enghien 
(1804), Edward Rush ton's on Burns (Rush ton's Poems, 1806), Lady Champion de 
Crespigny's on Lord CoUingwood (1810), Thomas Gent's on Sheridan (1816), C. A. 
Elton's on his two sons (The Brothers, 1820), James Davies's on an officer in the East 
India service (1844), "J. D.'s" on a brother (Halifax, undated), or William Beattie's 
on the death of his wife (1845). 

B. POEMS INFLUENCED BY COMUS 

1647 Baron, Robert. Erotopaignion, or the Cyprian academy, 1648. 

1738 D ALTON, John. Comus [adapted by John Dalton], 3d ed., 1738. 

1742 West, Gilbert. Instruction of the order of the garter, a dramatick poem. 

— Dodsley's Miscellany, 1748, ii. 107-68. 



682 BIBLIOGRAPHY III 

bef. 1 745 w. Warton, Thomas (the elder). Invocation to a water-nymph. — Poems, 

1748, pp. 21-2. 

1764 Anon. Parthenia, or the lost shepherdess, an Arcadian drama, 1764.-866 

Mo. Rev., xxxii. 233. 
1778 w. Mason, William. Sappho, a drama. — Poems, York, 1797, iii. 143-89. 

1787 Anon. Ode to the nymph of the Bristol spring.— Europ. Mag., xi. 201. 

1788 "Camisis." Ode to echo.— lb. xiv. 128. 

1793 Anon. Midsummer eve, or the sowing of hemp, 1793.-866 Mo. Rev., enl., 

xii. 341-2. 
1801 Thelwall, John. [Songs in] The fairy of the lake. — Poems written in 

Retirement, Hereford, 1801, pp. 31-4, 90-92. 
1811 Impey, E. B. [Choruses in] The sylphs. — Poems, 1811, pp. 104-7, ii5~i7- 

1814 Becket, Andrew. The genii, attendants on the human race, a masque.— 

Dramatic and Prose Miscellanies, ed. W. Beattie, 1838, i. 183-218. 



C. POEMS INFLUENCED BY THE TRANSLATION FROM HORACE 

C.1701-20 w.^ Say, Samuel. To his harp, from Casimir. — Poems, 1745, pp. 47-8. 

Horace, book iii, ode xvi, imitated.— lb. 75-80. 

1744-5 w. Warton, Thomas (the elder). Ode to taste. — Poems, 1748, pp. 180-83. 
1746 Collins, William. Ode to evening. — Poems, ed. Bronson, Boston (U.S.A.), 

1898, pp. 53-5. 

Warton, Joseph. Ode viii, To a fountain, imitated from Horace. — Odes, 
1746, pp. 32-3. 

Ode xiii. On shooting. — lb. 44-5. 

1759 Airy, Harriot. Ode to truth. — Gent. Mag., xxix. 538. 

i759~6o WoTY, William. Ode to content. — Shrubs of Parnassus, 1760, pp. 44-5. 

Ode to friendship. — lb. 73-5. 

A summer's morning.— lb. 104-6. 

Ode to health.— lb. 112-13. 

1761 Phillpps, Richard. "Ye solemn Cloysters." — Pietas Univ. Oxon., 1761, 

3L, verso. 
Vyse, William. "Midst the loud tumults." — Epithalamia Oxoniensia, 
i76i,Gg2. 

1762 Raynsford, Richard. "Hail, royal babe." — Gratulatio Solennis Univ. 

Oxon., 1762,31. 
Terry, Michael. "Auspicious month."— lb. Cc, verso. 

1763 Anon. Ode to health. — Poetical Calendar, iv. ii 6-1 7. 

1766 w. 1770 p. Bruce, Michael. Ode to a fountain.— Works, 1865, pp. 205-6. 
1770 8 — T, R — T. Ode to the morning. — Scots Mag., xxxii. 94. 

1773 AiKiN, A. L. (Mrs. Barbauld). Ode to spring. — Poems, 1773, pp. 97-100. 

1776 K., G. Ode to morning. — Town and Country Mag., viii. 326. 

Westby, S. Winter. — lb. loi. 
1780 Kemble, J. P. Ode to the memory of Mr. Inchbald. — Fugitive Pieces, 

1780, pp. 34-6. 

1782 Anon. Ode to health. — Univ. Mag., Ixxi. 166. 

c. 1782 w. Marriott, John. CoUins's Ode to Evening imitated.— A Short Account of 
John Marriott, etc., Doncaster, 1803, pp. 85-8. 
Translation of Horace's twenty-second ode, in book i.— lb. 89-90. 

1783 Anon. Ode to the morning.— Univ. Mag., Ixxii. 323. 

1785 Booker, Luke. Hymn to the moon. — Poems, Wolverhampton, 1785, i. 

70-74. 

» c. 1740 w. Thomas, Captain Lewis (?). Ode on Paradise Lost: see T. Warton's edition of Milton's 
minor poems, 1785, p. 368 n. Not seen. 



INFLUENCE OF TRANSLATION OF HORACE 683 

1785 Headley, Henry. Ode to the memory of Chatterton. — Poetical Works, 

ed. Park, 1808, pp. 31-2. 
Merry, Robert. Ode to summer.— The Florence Miscellany, Florence 

(Italy), 1785, pp. 109-12. 

Ode to winter.— lb. 1 13-15. 

c. 1785W. Robinson, Mary. Ode to Delia Crusca.-Poems, 1791, pp. 54-6. 

1786 Anon. Ode to morning. — Europ. Mag., x. 55-6. 
Anon. Ode to night.— lb. 380-81. 

Anon. On seeing an old man. — Gent. Mag., Ivi. 65. 

1787 Merry, Robert. Ode to tranquillity. — Poetry of the World, 1788, i. 18-20. 
Whitehouse, John. Ode to morning. — Poems, 1787, pp. 43-6. 

bef.1790 w. Warton, Thomas (the younger). Horace, book iii, od. 13.— Works, 
1802, i. 116. 
Horace, book iii. od. 18, after the manner of Milton.— lb. 117. 

1790 w. Polwhele, Richard. Ode to the spirit of freshness.— Influence of Local 

Attachment, 1798, ii. 1-7. 

1791 w. Sayers, Frank. Ode to morning. — Poetical Works, 1830, pp. 156-8. 

Ode to night.— lb. 159-61. 

1792 Anon. Ode to the Eolian harp.— Univ. Mag., xci. 60. 

G. Ode to fancy. — Poems by Gentlemen of Devonshire and Cornwall, 
1792, i. 71-7. 

"Philo-Thomson." Ode to indolence. — Gent. Mag., Ixii. 656. 
1792 w. Opie, Amelia. To twilight. — Southey's Annual Anthology, 1799, i. 202-4. 
1793-9 w. 1795-1805 p. Southey, Robert. To hymen.— Works, 1837, ii. 145-7. 

Written on the first of December [1793].— lb. 148-9. 

Written on the first of January [1794].— lb. 150-52. 

To recovery.- lb. 159-60. 

The destruction of Jerusalem.— lb. 182-4. 

The death of Wallace. -lb. 185-6. 

The Spanish Armada.— lb. 187-8. 

St. Bartholomew's day.— lb. 189-90. 

Song of the Araucans during a thunder storm.— lb. 210-11. 

Song of the Chikkasah widow.— lb. 212-13. 

To indolence.— Annual Anthology, 1799, i. 126-8. 

1798 Anon. Translation of Horace, book iii, ode 3.— Mo. Mag., v. 208. 

1798 w. Taylor, William. Ode on the death of Messrs. Shears of Dublin.— 

Memoir, ed. J. W. Robberds, 1843, i- 219-20. 
i798-i8o3?w. 1803- p. White, Henry Kirke. Ode, written on Whit-Monday.— 

Remains, 181 1, i. 356-7. 

The shipwreck'd solitary's song, to the night.— lb. 371-3. 

To an early primrose.— lb. ii. 52. 

Ode to the morning star.— lb. iii (1822), 74-5. 

1799 Taylor, William. A topographical ode. — Southey's Annual Anthology, i. 

1-9. 
bef.iSoow. Warton, Joseph. Ode to content.— Biographical Memoirs, ed. Wooll, 
1806, pp. 140-42. 

1801 Hunt, Leigh. To friendship.— Juvenilia, 4th ed. , 1803, pp. 1 16-18. 

1802 Dyer, George. To an enthusiast. — Poems, 1802, i. 9-13. 

1804 Anon. To the oak [at Llangollen Vale].— Mo. Mirror, xviii. 342-3. 

HowAiU), Nathaniel. To want.— Bickleigh Vale, etc., York, 1804, pp. 

47-51- 

To a red-breast.— lb. 61-3. 

To the echo of a grotto. — lb. 67-9. 

S., F. Horace, ode xxxi, book i.— Poetical Register for 1804, 2d ed., 1806, 

p. III. 



684 



BIBLIOGRAPHY III 



1805 W. To the wind, at midnight.— Mo. Mirror, xix. 268-9. 

1806 "A Stranger." Autumn.— lb. xxi. 130-31. 

1807 C. (JosiAH CoNDERS?). To hope.— The Associate Minstrels, 2d ed., 1813, 

pp. 36-40. 

1808 Noble, Thomas. Translation of the thirty-first ode, first book of Horace. 

— Blackheath, etc., 1808, pp. 36-7 (second pagination). 
1813 Anon. A song of freedom for the nineteenth century, translated from 

Stolberg.— Mo. Mag., xxxvi. pt. ii. 331-2. 
Shelley, P. B. To Harriet *****. — Poetical Works, ed. Hutchinson, 

Oxford, 1904, pp. 853-4. 
1823 w. bef .1836 p. Keble, John. Burial of the dead.— Miscellaneous Poems, 3d ed., 

Oxford, etc., 1870, pp. 15-18. 

1827 Tuesday after Easter.— The Christian Year, Oxford, 1827, i. 125-7. 

1835 Clare, John. Autumn. — Poems, ed. A. Symons, 1908, pp. 102-5. 

1837 Coleridge, Sara. "O sleep my babe." — Phantasmion, N. Y., 1839, i. 

151-2. 
"Ah, where lie now those locks that lately stream'd?"— lb. ii. 192-3. 

1907 Garnsey, E. R. To Pyrrha [Horace, I. v].— Odes of Horace, 1907, p. 83. 

D. POEMS INFLUENCED BY THE NATIVITY 

1647 Baron, Robert. Erotopaignion, or the Cyprian academy, 1648. 

c. 1730 w. Say, Samltel. Psalm xcvii, in paraphrastic verse. — Poems, 1745, pp. 85-9. 

1746 Collins, William. Ode to simplicity. — Poems, 1898, pp. 39-41. 

Warton, Joseph. Ode iv. To superstition. — Odes, 1746, pp. 19-21. 

Ode V, To a gentleman upon his travels thro' Italy. — lb. 22-5. 

1769 Gray, Thomas. Ode for music — English Poems, ed. Tovey, Camb., 1898, 

pp. 76-9. 
1775 "Clio." Ode for the nativity. — Town and Country Mag., vii. 662-3. 

1798 Anon. The abolition of Catholicism. — Mo. Mag., v. 367-8. 

1822 Shelley, P. B. Chorus. — Hellas, 1822, lines 197-238. 

1827 Keble, John. Second Sunday after Easter.— The Christian Year, 1827, 

i. 161-4. 
1866-1904 Swinburne, A. C. To Victor Hugo. — Poems, 1904, i. 144-50. 

The eve of revolution.— lb. ii. ia-26. 

Blessed among women. — lb. 56-63. 

Ode on the insurrection in Candia.— lb. 200-208. 

Birthday ode to Victor Hugo. — lb. iii. 341-58. 

Song for the centenary of Landor.— lb. v. 7-39. 

A new-year ode to Victor Hugo.— lb. vi. 27-44. 

The altar of righteousness.— lb. 301-20. 

The high oaks. — lb. 326-30. 

Barking hall: a year after. — lb. 331-3. 

Astraea victrix.— lb. 389-92. 

1867 Ingelow, Jean. Song for the night of Christ's resurrection (a humble 

imitation). — A Story of Doom, etc., Boston (U.S.A.), 1867, pp. 204-11. 

1908 DoBSON, Austin. A Miltonic exercise. — De Libris, 1908, pp. 191-2. 

Summary 

Paradise Lost 1239 

L'Allegro and II Penseroso 449 

Remaining Works 150 

Total 1838 



BIBLIOGRAPHY IV 

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SONNETS ' 

This is not a list of sonnets influenced by Milton (for such a list, see 
pages 696-7), but of all sonnets published between 1700 and 1800, as well 
as of all those by persons who began to write quatorzains before the end of 
the century.^ Magazine sonnets are an exception, since they are included 
only when some of their authors' pieces appeared in books.^ Unless other- 
wise indicated, each poem listed contains fourteen pentameter lines not 
riming in couplets. 

Of the abbreviations, trans. = translation; P. = Petrarchan (only 
poems that rime abb aabb acdecde or-c d c d c d are included under 
this head) ; S. = Shakespearean {ababcdcdefef gg); Sp. = Spenserian 
(ababbcbccdcdee); Ir. = Irregular, a designation used to cover any 
variation, however slight, from the other types but not intended as a 
reflection upon the poems, since Petrarch himself did not always use the 
system indicated by P. When the number or the kind of sonnets is not 
mentioned, it is because I have not seen the work. 

bef.1701 w. Sedley, Charles. Miscellaneous Works, 1702, pp. 97, loo-ioi, 
1 21-2, 144-5. 43.(2 octosyllabic). Several other pieces have a 
similar rime-scheme but contain more or less than fourteen lines; 
two others of sonnet length are in couplets. None of the poems are 
called sonnets. 

1705? King, William. Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, 1705 (?), pp. 491-2. 

I Ir. (not called a sonnet; only sLx of the lines are pentameter). 

bef.1715 w. MoNCK, Mary. Marinda, 1716, pp. 25-7, 65, 71-5, 87-91, 122-3. 
8 Ir. (trans.). Called sonnets, but i is elegiac, 4 are in couplets, 3 in 
blank verse, i octosyllabic, 2 in more than fourteen lines. 

1721 S., Mr. The Grove, 1721, pp. 163-4. j S. 

1 741 w. YoRKE, Philip, second earl of Hardwicke. H. Walpole's Catalogue of 

Royal and Noble Authors, ed. T. Park, 1806, iv. 400. i Ir. 

1742 w. 1775 p. Gray, Thomas. English Poems, ed. Tovey, Camb., 1898, p. 3. ilr. 

1743 w. YoRKE, Charles. P. C. Yorke's Life of Philip Yorke, Earl of Hard- 

wicke, Camb., 1913, i. 292, ii. 147. 2 Ir. 
1746W. 1801- p. Stillingfleet, Benjamin. Literary Life and Select Works, ed. W. 

Coxe, 1811, ii. 159-68. 8 P. 
1746-5SW. 1748- p. Edwards, Thom.\s. Canons of Criticism, 6th ed., 1758, pp. i, 2, 

3, and 18 prefatory, 260-61, 281-325; Nichols's Collection of Poems, 

1782, vi. 103-5. 52 •• 44P-,4 Sp.,4 Ir. 

1 This bibliography owes a great deal both in accuracy and in completeness to the months of painstaking 
labor Miss Rowe has given to it. 

2 In case of the numerous sonnets of Wordsworth and Capel Lofft, however, only the three each wrote 
before 1800 are listed. 

' These four may be regarded as significant on account of their early dates: London Mag., 1737, vi. 448 
(trans., eighteen lines, in couplets); 1738, vii. 336 ("in imitation of Milton's sonnets"); 1740, ix. 55$ 
(trans.); 1741, x. 47 (trans., sixteen lines, in couplets). 

68s 



686 BIBLIOGRAPHY IV 

1748 Roderick, Richard. Collection of Poems by Several Hands [Dodsley's 

Miscellany], 1748,11. 323. i Ir. (Irans.). 
1748-97W. 1764- p. M.'isON, William. Works, 1811, vol. i, prefatory, and pp. 119-34. 

14: 12 P., 2 Ir. 
1749- w. HiGHMORE, Susannah (Mrs. Duncombe). R. Freeman's Kentish 

Poets, Canterbury, 1821, ii. 385-6; another sonnet is written in a 

Boston library copy of Edwards's Canons. 4 (2 trans.): 2 P., 2 Ir. 
C.1750W. 1775- p. Chapone, Hester M. Works, 1807, ii. 11-12, iv. 155, 193. j Ir. 

(i trans.). 
C.1750W. Hall, William. Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, 1814, viii. 520. i P. 

C.1750- w. 1755-77 p. W.\RTON, Thomas (the younger). Works, ed. Mant, Oxford, 

1802, ii. 143-61. p.- s P-,4 Ir. 
i755~ w. 1764-71 p. Percy, Thomas. The Hermit of Warkworth, 1771, prefatory; 

Collection of Poems by Several Hands [Pearch's Supplement to 

Dodsley], new ed., 1783, iii. 298-300. j Sp. 
bef.1757 w. Duncombe, John. Freeman's Kentish Poets, 1821, ii. 379. i P. 
1761W. 1770P. C.,Mr. Pearch's Supplement, 1783, iv. 117. i S. 

1762 Carter, Elizabeth. Poems on Several Occasions, 1762, p. 49. 

I Ir. (trans.). 

1763 Anon. Poetical Calendar, 1763, vii. 78-80, viii. 65, xi. no. ^(4 

trans.): i S.,4 Ir. (i in couplets). 
Thompson, William. Poetical Works, ed. T. Park, 1807, pp. 177-8. 

2Sp. 

1763-1800 HooLE, John. Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, translated, 2d ed., 1764, 

vol. i, pp. xxxiii, xxxvi-vii; Metastasio's Dramas, translated, 1800, 
vol. i, pp. xix-xx; Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, translated, 1783, in 
Chalmers's English Poets, xxi. 34. 4 Ir. (trans.). 

1764? Walpole, Horace. Castle of Otranto, 2d ed., 1765, p. iii. i Ir. (lines 

of four or three feet). 

1764-76? Langhorne, John. Chalmers's English Poets, xvi. 430, 472-4; Mo. 

Rev., XXX. 123. 12 (g trans.): 4P.,8 Ir. (2 are in couplets, 5 in 
more or less than fourteen lines; 4 translations are from Petrarch, 
5 from Milton's Italian sonnets). 

1766-70 Scott, John, of Amwell. Poetical Works, 1782, pp. 313-17; Pearch's 

Supplement, 1783, iv. 112, 116. 6 Ir. (i mainly in couplets). 

1767 DoDD, William. Poems, 1767, pp. 82, 84. 2 Ir. 

1767-96W. 1768?- p. Downman, Hugh. Poems, 2d ed., Exeter, 1790, pp. 74-9; Poems 
to Thespia, 2d ed., Exeter, 1791, pp. 141-73, 175; Poems by 
Gentlemen of Devonshire and Cornwall, Bath, 1792, i. 182; Essays 
by Gentlemen at Exeter, 1796, pp. 337-41, 549-51; Polwhele's 
Traditions and Recollections, 1826, i. 155-6, 203-4; three other 
sonnets are written in the Harvard copy of Poems to Thespia, and 
one in the Harvard Bampfylde MS. 56: j P., 5 5., 50 /r. (5 in 
blank verse, i in couplets, i in thirteen lines). 

c. 1767- w. HuDDESFORD, George, and others. Wiccamical Chaplet, 1804, pp. 71, 
74-5, 80, 87-8. 6: 4 P., 2 Ir. (i in blank verse, thirteen lines).^ 

1768 BoswELL, James. Account of Corsica, Glasgow, 1768, p. 214. / Ir. 

{trans., sixteen lines). 

1769 w. WoLCOT, John ("Peter Pindar"). Wrote some "descriptive son- 

nets": see Polwhele's Traditions and Recollections, 1826, i. 35. 
1770- w. 1784- p. Seward, Anna. Original Sonnets, 2d ed., 1799; Works, 1810, 
iii. 50, 314, 316; Asylum for Fugitive Pieces, 1786, ii. 139; Gent. 
Mag., 1789, Hx. 743. 10 j (5 trans.): 38 P., 67 Ir. 

> Of the other sonnets in the volume, five are by Thomas Russell, four by Bampfylde, one each by Bowles, 
Davenport, and Charlotte Smith. 



SONNETS 687 

1771- w. Carr, W. W. Poems on Various Subjects, 1791, prefatory, and pp. 

93-107. 14: II P., 3 Ir. (i partly octosyllabic). 
1772 H., S. Conjugal Love, Camb., 1772. Contains sonnets: see Lofft's 

Laura, no. 912. 
1772-94? MiCKLE, W. J. Chalmers's English Poets, xvii. 540, 554-5. 3 

(2 trans.): i P., 2 Ir. 
1774 Henley, S. Nathaniel Tucker's Bermudian, 1774, prefatory, i Ir. 

1774 w. Collins, John. Letter to George Hardinge, 1777, p. 39. i Ir. 

1 774-1805 w. DuNSTER, CH.A.RLES. Poems by Gentlemen of Devonshire and Corn- 
wall, 1792, i. 183-5; S. E. Brydges's Censura Literaria, 1808, vi. 
414-15; Gent. Mag., Ixv. 328. 5 (/ trans.): 2 P., 3 Ir. (i in blank 
verse) . 
1776 Anon. Sonnets, 1776. 

1776 w. More, Hannah. Memoirs, ed. W. Roberts, N. Y., 1836, i. 50. i Ir. 

(sixteen lines) . 
1776-1818 BooTHBY, Sir Brooke. Sorrows, sacred to Penelope, 1796 (contains 24 

sonnets, 5 of which, including 4 translations, are in Lofft's Laura and 
7 others in Henderson's Petrarca) ; F. N. C. Mundy's Needwood 
Forest, Lichfield, 1776, app. (i P.); George Hardinge's Miscellane- 
ous Works, 1818, ii. 18 (/ Ir.). 26 (most of them not seen). 
1776- w. Cartwright, Edmund. Sonnets to Eminent Men, 1783 (6 Ir.); 

Letters and Sonnets, 1807; Armine and Elvira, 9th ed., 1804 (con- 
tains sonnets, see Mo. Rev.,enl.,.xlvi. 216-17); Prince of Peace, etc., 
1779 (contains 2 sonnets, see Mo. Rev., Ix. 373-5). Five sonnets 
(i P., 4 Ir.) are printed in Lofft's Laura. 
1776-1816W. Hardinge, George. Miscellaneous Works, 1818, ii. 3-28, 185, 436, 
440, 442. j2 (24 trans.): 34 P., 18 Ir. {All but two are called 
sonnets. Of the 18 irregular ones, 10 have more or less than fourteen 
lines and 2 are in lines of seven syllables; 4 are in couplets, — 
several other poems in fourteen lines and couplets, though not called 
sonnets, are in no way different from these four, — and 4 have a 
couplet-ending added to the regular Petrarchan rime-scheme.) 
1777 Anon. Sonnets [20] and Odes, translated from Petrarch, 1777. 

Schomberg, a. C. Bagley, Oxford, 1777, prefatory, i P. 
C.I 777? w. 1804 p. Jones, Sir William. Works, 1807, ii. 78 n. i P. 
1777- w. Roscoe, William. Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, Liverpool, 1795, i. 113, 

114, 261-2, 265, ii. 275; The Nurse, 3d ed., 1800, prefatory; Life of 
Leo X, Liverpool, 1805, i. 201, 210, 211 n.,282,iv. 207 n.;H. Roscoe's 
Life of Roscoe, 1833, i. 37, 166-7, 235-6, ii. 73, 82, 85, 222, 237-8, 
• 301-2; W. W. Currie's Memoir of James Currie, 1831, i. 150. 
21 (10 trans.): 6 P.,i S.,14 Ir. 
1777- w. 1785- p. PoLWHELE, Richard. Poems by Gentlemen of Devonshire, etc., 
1792, ii. 194-203; Sketches in Verse, 1796, pp. 67-71, 74-80; 
Influence of Local Attachment, etc., new ed., 1798, ii. 55-8, 62-3, 
67,69-70, 73,104-5, 108; Grecian Prospects, Helston, 1799, pp. i-ii; 
Poems, Truro, 1810, ii. 50-61, 73; Traditions and Recollections, 
1826, i. 156, 176-7, ii. 635, 688-9, 699; Reminiscences, 1836, voL i, 
pp. vi-vii, 15, vol. iii. 154-6, 163; P. L. Courtier's Pleasures of 
Solitude, etc., 3d ed., 1804, p. 7; S. J. Pratt's Harvest-Home, 1805, 
iii. 498-9; Europ. Mag., xxviii. 331. 60: 3 P., 17 S. {3 octosyllabic), 
40 Ir. (5 in blank verse, i in Alexandrine couplets, i partly octosyl- 
labic). Polwhele also wrote Pictures from Nature in Nineteen 
Sonnets, 2d ed., i786(?); Poems, 1788, which include 20 sonnets; 
and Poetic Trifles, 1796, which contain sonnets (see Mo. Rev., 
enl., xxi. 463-4). 



688 BIBLIOGRAPHY IV 

1777-89 w. Jackson, William. Nichols's Collection, 178 i, vii. 341-3; Freeman's 
Kentish Poets, 1821, ii. 403-8. 12 (3 trans.): i P., 4 S.,7 Ir. 

1778 "A Gentleman of Oxford." Academic Trifles, 1778. Contains 2 

sonnets in blank verse: see Crit. Rev., xlvi. 68. 
Holmes, Robert. Alfred, with Six Sonnets, Oxford, 1778, pp. 21-8. 

2P.,4lr. 
Pearce, William. The Haunts of Shakespeare, 1778, p. 26. i Ir. 
("collected from Shakespeare"). 

1778 w. 1789 p. Lettice, John. Poetry of the World, 1791, iv. 5-6. i Ir. 

1778 w. bef.1821 p. Six, James. Freeman's Kentish Poets, 1821, ii. 425-6. 3 P. 

1778-92 Bampfylde, John. Sixteen Sonnets, 1778. (Four of these and one 

new sonnet are printed in Poems by Gentlemen of Devonshire and 
Cornwall, 1792, i. 177-81; three more, apparently never printed, 
are in the Harvard Bampfylde MS.) 20: 4 P., 16 Ir. 

1779-1805W. 1781- p. Hayley, William. Poems and Plays, new ed., 1788, i. 161-71, 
iv. 29, 93, 189, 219, 221, V. 90, vi. 4; Triumph of Music, Chichester, 
1804, pp. 21, 52, 72, 80-83, 85-91, 93-5, 97-9, 100, loi, 132-3, 145". 
Life of G. Romney, Chichester, 1809, pp. 99-100, 159-60, 235-6, 292; 
Memoirs, ed. J. Johnson, 1823, i. 427-8, ii. 12-13, i5~i7) 22, 38, 43, 
84, 94, 97, 102; Memoirs of T. A. Hayley, by J. Johnson, 1823, pp. 
192-3, 211-12, 226, 250, 308, 324, 334-5, 425-6, 454-5, 47i-2_, 477- 
87, 492, 496-7; H. Roscoe's Life of William Roscoe, 1833, i. 244; 
Poetical Register for 1804, 2d ed., 1806, p. 377. 8g (5 trans.): 13 P., 
7<5 Ir. (Hayley's Essay on Sculpture, 1800, contains one or more 
sonnets: see Johnson, above, ii. 14). 

1780 Anon. An Idle Hour's Amusement: Poems, Sonnets, etc., 1780. 

c. 1780W. Kett, Henry. Juvenile Poems, Oxford, 1793, pp. 16-27, 43-4. 14 1^'- 

1781 Anon. The Bevy of Beauties: [24] Sonnets, 1781. 
H., S. Nichols's Collection, 1781, vii. 343-4. / S. 
Pinkerton, John. Rimes, 2d ed., 1782, pp. 217-26. 5 Ir. (i trans.). 

1781 w. Bradford, A. M. Downman's Poems to Thespia, 1791, pp. 187-8. 

I Ir. 
Cole, J. lb. 189. i S. 
1781- w. Preston, William. Poetical Works, Dublin, 1793, vol. i, pp. v, 255- 

94. 27 (5 trans.): g P., 18 Ir. 

1782 Anon. W. Hayley's Essay on Poetrv, 1782, p. 249. 2 (trans.): i P., 

I S. 
Bltrney, Charles. General History of Music, 1782, ii. 334-5. 2 P. 

(trans.). 
Sterling, Joseph. Poems, Dublin, 1782, pp. 2, 29, 109-119. 13: 6 S., 

4Sp.,3lr. 
1782-4 Warwick, Thomas. Abelard to Eloisa, 1783 (contains at least 13 

sonnets, — see Mo. Rev., Ixxii. 147-9, — most of which seem to be 

reprinted in Poems by Gentlemen of Devonshire and Cornwall, ii. 

212-22); Univ. Mag., Ixxi. 219, Ixxiv. 395, Ixxv. 334. At least 

16 Ir. (2 trans.). 
1782-1823W. 1785- p. Brydges, Egerton. Poems, 4th ed., 1807, pp. 3-47; Censura 

Literaria, 1807-9, iii, prefatory, iv. 204-5, vi- 99, 402-3, 419; vii, pp. 

v-vi; x. 85; Five Sonnets to Wootton (Kent, 1819), pp. 3-7; Gnomica 

(Geneva, 1824), pp. 242-3, 295, 312-13. 65 (i trans.): 15 P., 5 S., 

45 Ir. 
1783-95 Williams, Helen Maria. Poems, 2d ed., 1791, i. 53-8, ii. 21-8; Paul 

and Virginia, translated, 1795, PP- 33, 53, 78, 91, 105, 113, 200, 202. 

13: 8 P.,2 S., 3 Ir. (The novel, Julia, 1790, also contains sonnets: 

see New Annual Reg., 1790, p. [179].) 



SONNETS 689 

1783-96 Stevens, W. B. Stebbing Shaw's Staffordshire, 1798, i. 343-4; Gent. 

Mag., Ivi. 427, bcvi. 421. 4 (i trans.): 2 S.,2 Ir. {i in eighteen 
lines). 

1784 Lipscomb, William. Poems, [with] Translations of [23] Select Italian 

Sonnets, Oxford, 1784. 
Robertson, David. Poems, Edin., 1784. Probably contains the ir- 
regular sonnet in Univ. Mag., Ixxiv. 35. 

1 784-1 803 Smith, Charlotte. Elegiac Sonnets, etc., 8th ed., 1 797-1800, i. 1-59, 

ii. 1-33; Univ. Mag., Ixxxiv. 331; Henderson's Petrarca, 1803, p. 52. 
g4: (5 trans.): 2 P., 40 S., i Sp., 51 Ir. 

1 784-1 810 Tytler, a. F., Lord Woodhouslee. Historical and Critical Essay on 

Petrarch, with a Translation of a few of his Sonnets, Edin., 1810, pp. 
62-3 n., 107-8, 201-2, 255-69. 15 (trans.): 4 S., 11 Ir. (i in fifteen 
lines; i in twenty lines, seven of which have only six syllables each; 
3 in blank verse) . 

1785 Black, John. The Vale of Innocence, and Sonnets, Woodbridge, 1785. 

(Several sonnets by Black, some of later date, are printed in Lofft's 
Laura.) 

Greatheed, Bertie. The Florence Miscellany, Florence (Italy), 1785, 
p. 80. I P. 

Knight, Samuel. Elegies and Sonnets, 1785. 

Merry, Robert. The Florence Miscellany, 91. i P. (trans.). 
1785-96 Parsons, William. lb. 31, 74, 89; Ode to a Boy at Eton, with three 

Sonnets, 1796, pp. 3, 19, 20; Europ. Mag., xxi. 222. y (2 trans.): 
I P.,3 S., 3 Ir. (Parsons's Poetical Tour, 1787, also contains son- 
nets: see Crit. Rev., Ixiv. 225.) 

1785- w, Drummond, G. H. Poems [= Verses Social and Domestic, Edin., 

1802 ?]. Contains sonnets: see Lofft's Laura, nos. 222-3, 297. 
i785?-i838w. 1788- p. Bowles, W. L. Works, ed. Gilfillan, Edin., 1855, i. 7-31, ii. 
145, 323, 324, 327, 328; Gent. Mag., new series, x. 44. ^o: 2 P., 
48 Ir. (i in thirteen lines, 2 in fifteen). 

bef.1786 w. Anon. Jens Wolff's Sketches and Observations, 1801. i Ir.: see Mo. 
Rev., enl., xl. 366-7. 

1786 Anon. Asylum for Fugitive Pieces, 1786, ii. 24-9. 6 (i trans.): 5 P., 

I Ir. 
Headley, Henry. Poetical Works, ed. T. Park, 1808, p. 23. i 5. 

1786- w. Pye, H. J. Poems on Various Subjects, 1787, vol. i, pp. iii-iv; Verses 

on Several Subjects, 1802, pp. 71-3; S. J. Pratt's Harvest-Home, 
1805, iii. 229, 233, 254; Lofft's Laura, no. 273; Gent. Mag., Ixxv. 
592. 8 (i trans.): 6 P., i S., i Ir. 

1786-90 w. Rannie (or Rennie?), John. Poems, 1789 (contains sonnets, see Crit. 
Rev., Ixvii. 553); Poetry of the World, 1791, iii. 130; Europ. Mag., 
xvii. 232-3, xviii. 70-71, 220; Scots Mag., Hi. 302; Edin. Mag., 
March, 1792, p. 460. 12: 11 S., i Ir. 

1786-92W. 1787- p. Wordsworth, William. Poetical Works, ed. Knight, 1896, i. 3-4; 
viii. 209-10, 214-15. j; I S.,2 Ir. (As Wordsworth's 520 sonnets 
written after 1800 are of a later type, they are not included here.) 

1786-1800W. 1789- p. Robinson, Mary. Works, 1806, iii. 63-126 (62, of which the 43 
in the sequence "Sappho and Phaon, in a series of Legitimate Son- 
nets," and 3 others, are P., 3 S., the re.st Ir.); Poems, 1791, pp. 172, 
i73> i74> 177, 179, 185; Memoirs, 1801, iii. 92; M. E. Robinson's 
Shrine of Bertha, 1794, i. 133; Univ. Mag., xciii. 300. 77; 46 P., 
5 S.,20 Ir. 



690 



BIBLIOGRAPHY IV 



1786-1833W. 1794- p. Coleridge, S. T. Works, ed. E. H. Coleridge, Oxford, 1912, i. 5, 
9-10, 11-12, 16-17, 20, 21, 29, 37, 47-8, 71, 72-3, 79-90, 93, 152-S, 
209-11, 236, 361-2, 392-3, 402-3, 429, 435, 447, 459-60, 490. 46 (i 
trans.): i P., g S., 36 Ir. {2 mainly in couplets, i mainly octo- 
syllabic). The Bala Hill and Faded Flower sonnets (pp. 56, 70), 
usually printed as Coleridge's, are counted as Southey's; "Pale 
Roamer" (p. 71) is counted as Coleridge's; the two poems on pan- 
tisocracy (pp. 68-9), of uncertain authorship, are not counted 
anywhere. 

1787 B — o, J. Asylum for Fugitive Pieces, 1789, iii. 215. i Ir. (sixteen 

lines) . 
Cunningham, Peter. Anna Seward's Letters, 1811, i. 291-2 n. i S. 

1787-8 Anon, (chiefly "Benedict"). Poetry of the World, 1788, ii. 122-32. 

II Ir. 

1787-93 Reid,W. H. Poems (posthumous, date unknown). Probably includes 

the following sonnets: Univ. Mag., Ixxx. 264-5, Ixxxi. 44, 208, 366, 
Ixxxii. 98, 211; Gent. Mag., Ivii. 626, lix. 258, 353, 555, Ix. 450, 555, 
Ixi. 759, 856, Ixiii. 360; Scots. Mag., Iii. 89; Europ. Mag., xviii. 223; 
Literary Mag. and British Rev., August, 1790, p. 148. 21 (j trans.): 
7 S.,14 Ir. 

1787-1804 Whitehouse, John. Poems, 1787, pp. 81-9; Poetical Register for 

1804, 2d ed., 1806, pp. 155, 159. 11: 4 P., 7 Ir. (4 in couplets, 2 in 
blank verse). 

1787-1822 Thelwall, John. Poems on Various Subjects, 1787, ii. 173; Poems 

written in the Tower, 1795, pp. 1-12; Poems written in Retirement, 
Hereford, 1801, p. loi; Poetical Recreations, 1822, pp. 44, 143, 
184-5, 228-9. 20; 3S., 17 Ir. (i in fifteen lines, i octosyllabic). 

bef.1788 w. Russell, Thomas. Sonnets, etc., Oxford, 1789, pp. 1-27. 23 (6 trans.): 

9 P., 3S., II Ir. 

1788 Browtsj, James. Original Poems, Sonnets, etc., 1788. 

Day, J. WiUiam Upton's Poems on Several Occasions, 1788, pp. 187- 

8. I S. 
Upton, William. Poems on Several Occasions, 1788, pp. 62-3, 94-S, 

112-13, 122-5, 222-5, 231-2. 8 S. (i octosyllabic). 
1788-9 Lister, Thomas. Anna Seward's Letters, ii. 171, 279; H. Gary's 

Memoir of H. F. Gary, 1847, i. 16; Gent. Mag., lix. 841. 4: i P., 

2 Ir., I not seen. 

1788-94 Weston, Joseph. H. Gary's Memoir of H. F. Gary, i. 13-14; Gent. 

Mag., Iviii. 1008, Ixi. 660, 760; Europ. Mag., xxvi. 366. 6 (i trans.): 

3 P., 3 Ir. (May be included in the pieces that Weston published- 
with "Mrs. Pickering's" poems, 1794.) 

1788-95 Beloe, Willi.\m. Poems, 1788, pp. 35-48; Miscellanies, 1795, i- 65-71. 

14 (2 trans.): g S., 5 Ir. 

1788- w. 1794- p. Penn, John. Poems, 1801, i. 38-42; ii. 245-9, 250,253-7, 264-70, 
275-82,289-90. 25 (23 trans.): i6P.,gIr. 

1788-93W. 1792- p. GowPER, WiLLi.\M. Poems, ed. J. G. Bailey, 1905, pp. 445, 459, 
489-90, 492, 494-5, 499, 597-9- I4(5 trans.): i P., 13 Ir. (i in 
couplets). 

1788-1823W. Park, Thomas. Sonnets, etc., 1797, pp. i, 1-30; Anna Seward's 

Original Sonnets, 1799, p. vii; Mo. Mirror, ix. 362, xv. 47, xix. 268, 
xxii. 196; Poetical Register for 1804, 2d ed., 1806, p. 152; Park's 
edition of T. Russell's Poems, 1808, prefatory; Kirke White's Re- 
mains, 1811, i. 304-5; Lofft's Laura, 1813, no. 291; S. E. Brydges's 
Miscellaneous Articles, Kent, c. 1815 (2 sonnets, near the end); 
Robert Bloomfield's Remains, 1824, i. 185-6. 43 (i trans.): 3 P., 

10 S. , 30 Ir. 



SONNETS 691 

1788-1844 w. Gary, H. F. Sonnets and Odes, 1788, pp. 7-34; Memoir, ed. H. Gary, 
1847, i. 16, 23, 26, 30, 35, 37, 69, 96, ii. 6, 308-9; Gent. Mag., lix. 
257, 553- In the prefatory life and the footnotes to the 1819 edition 
of his Dante are translations of 12 Italian sonnets, and in S. Wad- 
dington's Sonnets of Europe, 1886, pp. 87, 118, 137-9, a-re transla- 
tions of one more Italian and 4 French sonnets. 58 (20 trans.): 
36 P., 2 Sp., 20 It. (Two translations from the Italian, mentioned 
in the Memoir, i. 109, 1 have not seen.) 

1789 Anon. The Garland, 1789. Gontains sonnets: see Mo. Rev., Ixxx. 366. 

Anon. Sonnets, 1789. Gontains 60 sonnets, apparently Petrarchan: 

see Mo. Rev., Ixxxi. 366. 
Groombridge, William. Sonnets, Ganterbury, 1789. 

1789-92 Emett, S. Poems by Gentlemen of Devonshire and Gornwall, 1792, 

i. 186-92, ii. 193. 8 S. 

1789 w. Fanshawe, C. M. Literary Remains, 1876, p. 79. i S. 

1789-94 w. Burns, Robert. Gomplete Works, Gambridge (U. S. A.) ed., pp. 144, 
178, 179-80. 4 Ir. (i in couplets). 

1789-1823W. 1791- p. Radcliffe, Ann. Romance of the Forest, chs. iii, xviii (.xvii in 
some editions); Mysteries of Udolpho, chs. i, \\\\ (or ix), Iii (or Ii); 
Poems, 1816, p. 115; Miscellaneous Poems, appended to St. Alban's 
Abbey, 1826, p. 231; Lofft's Laura, no. 365. 5; j S., 5 Ir. (The 
novels contain eight or ten other poems of varying length and rime- 
scheme, which are usually termed sonnets.) 

<:.i789-i8o2w. 1789?- p. Dermody, Thomas. Poems, 1800, pp. 3, 102-4, 109; Life, 
by J. G. Raymond, 1806, ii. 206-7, 209-10, 314-15; Mo. Mirror, ix. 
236; Anthologia Hibernica, 1793, i. 225; Lofft's Laura, no. 953. 
14: 7 S.,7 Ir. (all called sonnets, but six are in more than fourteen 
lines). 

1790 Anon. Sonnets to Eliza, 1790. Most of these have twenty or twenty- 

four lines, and are irregular in rime (see Grit. Rev., Ixix. 591-2), but 
some may be true sonnets. 
"JuNiA." Poetry of the World, 1791, iii. 181. i 5. 
Pearson, Susanna. Poems, Sheffield, 1790. Gontains at least 3 son- 
nets: see Mo. Rev., enl., iv. 579; New Annual Reg., 1790, pp. 
[178-9]; Univ. Mag., Ixxxix. 218. 
Shillito, Gharles. a Sonnet, supposed to have been written by Mary 
Queen of Scots, translated, 1790. 

1790-91 Armstrong, John ("Albert"). Sonnets from Shakespeare, 1791. 

Gontains 3 original sonnets (pp. i, 44, 45) and 39 passages from 
Shakespeare's plays arranged in sonnet form. In the Boston Library 
copy are newspaper clippings of 3 more original sonnets. 45 5. 

1790-1803W. 1791- p. Sayers, Frank. Poetical Works, 1830, pp. 1, 178-81, 183-5. 
8: 2 P.,2 S.,4lr. 

1 790-1 81 7 w. Sotheby, William. Tour through Wales, etc., 1790, pp. 45-59; Saul, 
1807, p. 95; Italy, etc., 1828, p. 220 (six other poems, pp. 221-2, 224, 
311, 313-14, suggest the sonnet in their rime-scheme, but contain 
either too many or too few lines). 16: i P., 15 Ir. (i in sixteen 
lines, called sonnet). 

1790-1822W. 1799- p. Opie, Amelia. Poems, 1802 (contains at least 3 irregular son- 
nets, see Lofft's Laura, nos. 86, 290, 293); The Warrior's Return, 
etc., Phil., 1808, pp. 59-60, 105-6; Madeline, 1822, in Works, Phil., 
1853, i. 51, 75; Brightwell's Memorials, Norwich, 1854, pp. 9, 39. 
At least 10: ^ S., 3 Ir., 2 not seen. 

1790-1826W. Taylor, John. Verses on Various Occasions, 1795, pp. 46-9, 135-6; 
Poems on Various Subjects, 1827, i. 147-210, ii. 66, 253-7; Mrs. 
Robinson's Memoirs, 1801, iv. 162. loj: 74 P., 26 S., 3 Ir. 



692 BIBLIOGRAPHY IV 



1 



c. 1790-1837 Llwyd, Richard. Poetical Works, 1837, pp. 71, 82, 93, 104, 117, 137, 
161, 168, 182-3, 187, 247-8, 280, 285-6. ly. 2 S., I Sp.,io Ir. 
(mainly in couplets, 2 partly octosyllabic). 

c. 1790 w. 1798 p. Drake, Nathan. Literary Hours, 3d ed., 1804, i. 115-18. 4: 2 S., 
2 Ir. (Drake also prints, i. 78, in, an anonymous irregular sonnet 
translated from Petrarch, and two from Lupercio, one of them in 
blank verse.) 

c. i79o?w. Manners, Lady. Poems, 2d ed., 1793, pp. 79-81, 84, 119, 121. 6:5 s. 

(3 octosyllabic), i Ir. 

c. 1790-1805 w. RoDD, Thomas. Sonnets, etc., 1814. 118: 14 P., 29 S., 75 Ir. 

c. 1790- w. Wr.-vngham, Francis. Poems, 1795, pp. 55-6, 65-6, 100-102; A Few 
Sonnets from Petrarch, Kent, 1817 (40 trans., i orig.); Lofft's 
Laura, no. 527, 48 (41 trans.): 2Q P., 2 S., 17 Ir. 

bef.1791 w. Oram,S. M. Poems, 1794, pp. 13-23. xi; / P., 2 5. (i anapestic),<S /r. 

1791 Aikin, John. Poems, i 791, pp. 75-8. 4 Ir. 

Anon. The Beauties of Mrs. Robinson, 1791, prefatory. See Crit. 
Rev., new arr., iii. 353. 

Bentley, Elizabeth. Poetical Compositions, Norwich, 1791. Con- 
tains sonnets: see Lofft's Laura, no. 727 (in couplets), no. 870 (S.). 

M'Donald, Andrew. Miscellaneous Works, 1791, p. 145. i P. 
1791-1826 Hole, Richard. H. Downman's Poems to Thespia, 1791, p. 203; 

R. Polwhele's Traditions and Recollections, 1826, i. 271-2. 2 Ir. 
i79i?-i8oi Thomson, Alexander. Sonnets, Odes, and Elegies, Edin., 1801. 
Contains 135 sonnets (see Mo. Mirror, xiii. 177-8), which may in- 
clude one appended to his Whist (1791) and six adapted from Werter 
printed in his Essay on Novels (1793, see Crit. Rev. , new arr. , xi. 
416-18). 

1792 Anon. A Poem on a Voyage of Discovery, with Sonnets, 1792, pp. 

35-46. 12: I P.,7 S.,4lr. 
F. Poems by Gentlemen of Devonshire and Cornwall, 1792, i. 193-4. 

2 (i trans.): i S. i Ir. (twelve lines) . 
Farrell, Sarah. Charlotte, or a Sequel to the Sorrows of Werter, etc., 

Bath, 1792, pp. 61-2. I S. 
Robertson, David. Tour through the Isle of Man, 1794, p. 123. i S. 
Skelton, Abraham. The Temple of Friendship, York, 1792, pp. 29- 

30. 2 S. 
SwETE, John. Poems by Gentlemen of Devonshire and Cornwall, 

1792, ii. 205-9. 5 ^^- (i in twelve lines). 
V. lb. 210. I Ir. 
Weston, Stephen. lb. 223. i Ir. 
Y. lb. 224. I S. (octosyllabic). 
1792? Anon. Sonnets, Original and Translated, i792(?). 

1792 w. G., R. Polwhele's Traditions and Recollections, 1826, i. 291-2. 2: 

I S., I Ir. (in couplets). 
1792-1819 RiCKMAN, T. C. Poetical Scraps, 2 vols., 1803 (probably includes the 

sonnets in Lofft's Laura, — jo S., 6 Ir., one a translation); Life of 

Thomas Paine, 1819, dedicatory (i S.). 
bef.i793w. Tickell, Richard. Mrs. Robinson's Memoirs, 1801, iv. 102. i Ir. 

1793 Anon. Asylum for Fugitive Pieces, 1793, iv. 145. i Ir. 
Anon. Sonnets by a Lady, 1793. 

Anon. Sweets and Sorrows of Love, 1793. Contains sonnets: see 
Mo. Rev., enl., xv. 106. 

Kendall, William. Poems, Exeter, 1793. Contains Petrarchan son- 
nets: see Crit. Rev., new arr., ix. 382-3. 

Logan, Maria. Poems on Several Occasions, York, 1793. Contains, 
sonnets: see Lofft's Laura, no. 405. 



SONNETS 693 

1793 Scott, Thomas. Poems, Paisley, 1793, pp. 310-12. 2: / S., i Ir. 

(eighteen lines) . 

1793-1813 HoLCROFT, Thomas. Asylum for Fugitive Pieces, 1793, iv. 183; 

LofFt's Laura, no. 285. 2 Ir. (partly in couplets). 

1793- w. i8i9?-4i p. Montgomery, James. Poetical Works, Boston, 1858, ii. 161-4, 
iii. 121-3, 196-7, iv. 347-52, V. 313; Lofft's Laura, vol. i, p. ccxxxiii. 
16 (12 trans.): 4 P., 4 S., 8 Ir. 

1793-1805 Mayor, William. Poems, 1793, pp. 329-46; S. J. Pratt's Harvest- 

Home, 1805, iii. 292-6; Mo. Mirror, xvi. 84. 22 Ir. 

1794 Bellamy, Thomas. Miscellanies, 1794, ii. 130. i S. 

BiDLAKE, John. Poems, Plymouth, 1794. Contains sonnets: see Mo. 

Rev.,enl.,xvi. 261. 
Harrison, Anthony. The Infant Vision of Shakspeare, etc., 1794, 

pp. 11-18, 21, 24. 10: 6 S., 4 Ir. (2 in couplets, and only one with 

five feet in every line) . 
Irwin, Eyles. William Ouseley's Oriental Collections, 1797, i. 130; 

Gent. Mag., Ixiv. 1035. 2 Ir. (i trans.). 
Williams, Edward. Poems, Lyric and Pastoral, 1794. Contains son- 
nets: see Mo. Rev., enl., xiii. 409. 
Young, Maria Julia. Poems, 1798. Probably contains the sonnets in 

Univ. Mag., xcv. 375, and Gent. Mag., Ixiv. 457. 
1794 (1764?) Whateley, Mary (Mrs. Darwall). Poems on Several Occasions, 

Walsall, 1794. Contains sonnets: see Crit. Rev., new arr., xiv. 

344-5- 
1794-6 Yearsley, Ann. The Rural Lyre, 1796. Probably contains the 4 son- 

nets (3 S., I Ir.) in Europ. Mag., xxvi. 63, and Univ. Mag., xcviii. 
360. 
1794-9 Jennings, James. Southey's Annual Anthology, i. 148-9; Europ. 

Mag., XXV. 54, 239, xxvi. 289, 366, xxviii. 198-9. 12: 3 S., 9 Ir. (i 
in couplets). 
1794-1801 Oliphant, Robert. Mrs. Robinson's Memoirs, 1801, iv. 123, 157. 

2: I S., I Ir. (in couplets). 
1794 w. Rutt, J. T. Memorials, Bristol, 1845. Probably contains the irregular 

sonnet in Lofft's Laura, no. 825. 
v., R. (Richard Valpy?). S. J. Pratt's Harvest-Home, 1805, iii. 327. 
I S. 
1794- w. West, Jane. Poems and Plays, 1799, i. 193-202, iii. 189-204; Tale of 

the Times, Alexandria, 1801, i. 240; The Mother, 1809, prefatory; 
Gent. Mag., Ixx. 370, 465-6, 665. 2p: 9 P., 6 S., 14 Ir. (These 
may include the sonnets printed in her Gossip's Story, 1796: see 
Mo. Mirror, ii. 418-19.) 
1794-1836 Lamb, Charles. Works, ed. Lucas, 1903, v. 3-4, 7-8, 14, 16, 4«>-42, 

47, 54-7, 73-4, 77, 82-3, 90, 94, loi, 104, 105-6. 35: 4 S. (i in 
dactylic tetrameter) , 31 Ir. The first sonnet listed is counted also 
for Coleridge. 
1794-1843W. Southey, Robert. Works, 1837, vol. ii, pp. xix, 55-8, 90-100, 
117-20; Poems, by R. Lovell and R. Southey, Bath, 1795, pp. 57-62, 
67-8, 71-2; Poems, 1797, pp. iio-ii; Letters written in Spain and 
Portugal, Bristol, 1797, pp. 57-8, 120-21, 181-2, 231, 502-3; The 
Doctor, 1834-47, i. 53-4, vi. 340; Adamson's Memoirs of Camoens, 
1820, i. 94, 105, 251, 256, 265; Lofft's Laura, no. 971. 56(11 
trans.): 5 S., 51 Ir. (Includes the Faded Flower and Bala Hill 
sonnets.) 
1795 Ashburnham, William. Elegiac Sonnets, etc., 1795. Contains at 

least 25 sonnets: see Mo. Rev., enl., xix. 222-3. 



694 



BIBLIOGRAPHY IV 



1795 w. B., H. W. Southey's Annual Anthology, 1799, i. 135. i Ir. 

1795-1800 LovELL, Robert. Poems by R. Lovell and R. Southey, Bath, 1795, 

pp. 63-6, 69-70; Southey's Annual Anthology, i. 146-7, ii. 160. 
9: I S.,8Ir. 
1795-1801 Le Mesurier, Thomas, or Hamley, Edward (cf. below, 1796). 

Translations, chiefly from Petrarch and Metastasio, Oxford, 1795 
(contains translations of more than 24 Italian sonnets, see Mo. Rev., 
enl., xviii. 429-33, British Museum catalogue, and Henderson's 
Petrarca, which prints 12 of them); Poems, chiefly Sonnets, by the 
Author of Translations from Petrarch, Metastasio, etc., 1801 (con- 
tains at least 37 sonnets, see Mo. Rev., xxxvi. 145-8). 
1795-1820W. Lloyd, Charles. Poems on Various Subjects, Carlisle, 1795, pp. 3, 
7-21, 88-9; Poems on the Death of Priscilla Farmer, Bristol, 1796, 
pp. 7-17; Poems by Coleridge, Lamb, and Lloyd, 1797, pp. 169-78; 
Nugae Canorae, 1819, pp. iii, 183-252; Desultory Thoughts, 1821, 
pp. iii, 252; Southey's Annual Anthology, i. 140; Macready's 
Reminiscences, 1875, i. 164. lo'^ (8 trans.): 11 P., 18 S., y8 Ir. 
c. i795?-i857 w. Bray, E. A. Poems, 1799 (contains at least 2 sonnets, see Crit. Rev., 
new arr., xxviii. 352-3); Literary Remains, 1859, i. 89-123, 214, 
222-3, ii. 45. 38 (2 trans.): j6P.,2S. 
1796 "Eliza." Poems and Fugitive Pieces, 1796. Contains sonnets: see 

Lofft's Laura, no. 308. 
Hamley, Edward. Poems of Various Kinds, 1796. Contains "a 
series of sonnets formerly published": see Mo. Rev., enl., xx. 471, 
and cf. above, 1795-1801. 
Harrop, E. a. Original Miscellaneous Poems, 1796, pp. 19-20, 29-30, 

38-9, 42-3, 53-4, 76-7. 6: I S.,5 Ir. (in couplets). 
Johnson, John. Trifles in Verse, 1796. Contains at least 2 sonnets: 

see Mo. Rev., enl., xx. 347. 
Robinson, Thom.as. Sketches in Verse, 1796. Contains sonnets: see 

Crit. Rev. , new arr. , xxii. 474. 
"A Student of Lincoln's Inn." Poems, Sonnets, etc., 1796. 
c. 1796? w. Beresford, Benjamin. Mrs. Robinson's Memoirs, 1801, iv. 156. i Ir. 

Colombine, Paitl. lb. 161. i P. 
1796-7 Beckford, William. Azemia, 1797, i. 119-120, ii. 9-10, 28-9. j Ir. 

(Beckford's Modern Novel-writing, 1796, also contains sonnets: see 
his Memoirs, 1859, ii. 167. Over 30 Shakespearean sonnets by the 
William Beckford who wrote a history of Jamaica are printed in the 
Monthly Mirror from 1796 to 1805, and 3 more in Lofft's Laura.) 
1796-9 Cheetham, R. F. Odes and Miscellanies, 1796, and Poems, 1798 

(contain sonnets, see Mo. Rev., enl., xxvi. 94, and Crit. Rev., new 
arr., xxvi. 230-32); Gent. Mag., Ixvi. 774-5, Ixix. 884 (2 Ir.). 
1796-1802 Courtier, P. L. Poems, 1796, pp. 19-41; Pleasures of Solitude, etc., 

3d ed., 1804, pp. 107, 136, 138. 24: 14 S., 10 Ir. 
Strong, E. K. (Mrs. Charles Mathews). Poems, Exeter, 1796, pp. 
23-8. 6: 2 S., 4 Ir. {1 in couplets). Another volume, published at 
Doncaster, 1802, also contains sonnets (see Crit. Rev., new arr., 
xxxvii. 474) and may include those in Europ. Mag., xxx. 207, Mo. 
Mirror, iii. 307, v. 368, and Lofft's Laura, no. 127. 
1796-1804 Grove, William. Poetical Register for 1804, 2d ed., 1806, pp. 151, 

153, 380. 3 P- 
1796-1820 Anderson, Robert. Poetical Works, 1820, ii. 97-106; Europ. Mag., 

xxix. 201, xxx. 55, 207, xxxii. 184, 185, 266, 344 (probably reprinted 

in his Poems, 1798). At least ig: 5 S., 14 Ir. (i in twelve lines). 
1796-1805W. Meyler, William. Poetical Amusement on the Journey of Life, 

Bath, 1806, pp. 160-62, 206-7. 5: 2 S., 3 Ir. 



SONNETS 695 

1796-1803? w. Davenport, R. A. Henderson's Petrarca, 1803, pp. i82-3(?); Poetical 
Register for 1804, 2d ed., 1806, pp. 379, 381, S^S- 5 If- (^ trans.). 

1796- w. 1801 p. Hunt, Leigh, juvenilia, 4th ed., 1803, pp. 51-2, 55-7, 59. 6 (i 
trans.): 3 S., 3 Ir. (At least 44 other original sonnets and 9 transla^ 
tions, written after 1800, are printed in Hunt's other works, but not 
all in any one edition.) 

c. 1796- w. RoscoE, W. S. Poems, 1834, pp. 14, 33-4, 72, 82-3, 94-5, 102-3. 
10: 5 P., sir. 

1797 Betham, Matilda. Elegies, etc., Ipswich, 1797. Contains sonnets: 

see Loflt's Laura, no. 193. 
Carlisle, Frederick Howard, Earl of. Poetry of the Anti- Jacobin, 

2d ed., by C. Edmonds, 1854, p. 30. i P. 
DiBDiN, T. F. Poems, 1797. Contains at least i sonnet: see Mo. 

Mirror, iii. 353. 
DoNOGHUE, J. Juvenile Essays in Poetry, 1797. Contains at least 2 

sonnets: see Mo. Rev., enl., xxiii. 457-8. 
Rough, William. Lorenzino di Medici, etc., 1797. Contains sonnets: 

see Crit. Rev., new arr., xxiii. 466-7. 
SmTH, Thomas. Poems, Manchester, 1797. Contains sonnets: see 

ib. xxvi. 349-50. 
ToMLiNS, E. S. and Sir T. E. Tributes of Affection, etc., 1797. Con- 
tains sonnets: see Mo. Rev., enl, xxiv. 214. 

1798 Anon. Effusions of Fancy, 1798. Contains sonnets: see Crit. Rev., 

new arr., xxiii. 109. 

Fawcett, Joseph. Poems, 1798. Contains sonnets: see Mo. Rev., 
enl., xxviii. 272. 

HoLFORD, Margaret. Gresford Vale, etc., 1798. Contains sonnets: 
see ib. xxv. 476. 

HucKS, Joseph. Poems, 1798. Contains sonnets: see Crit. Rev. , new 
arr., xxiii. 33-5. 

Hughes, H. Retribution, 1798. Contains sonnets: see ib. xxv. 112-13. 

Hunter, John. Poems, 3d ed., 1805, pp. 219-27. 7 Ir. 
1798-1810 Stockdale, Mary R. Effusions of the Heart, 1798 (contains sonnets, 

see Crit. Rev., new arr., xxii. 352); Mirror of the Mind, 1810 (con- 
tains at least 38 sonnets, see Morning Post, Dec. 22, 1813). 
1798-1819 Leyden, John. Poetical Remains, 1819, pp. 12-17, 22-6, 114, 141. 

223-4, 227-8, 254; Edin. Mag. or Lit. Misc., new series, xi. 467. 
ig Ir. (6 trans.). 

1799 Anon. Original Sonnets, Elegiac, Ethic, and Erotic, Whitby, 1799. 
F., S. Southey's Annual Anthology, i. 143-4- 2 Ir. 

Jones, John. Amatory Odes, Epistles, and Sonnets, 1799- 
MuNDY, F. N. C. Anna Seward's Letters, Edin., 1811, v. 217-18 n. 
I P. (The Bibliotheca Staff ordiensis, 1894, p. 321, mentions two 
manuscript sonnets.) 
1799-1800 Anon. Southey's Annual Anthology, i. 134, 137, 139, 145; ii. i54> 

161, 163. 7: I S., 6 Ir. 
Case, William. Ib. ii. 152-3. 2 P. 

Harley, G. D. Ballad Stories, Sonnets, etc., vol. i, Bath, 1799; 
Holyhead Sonnets, Bath, 1800. 
1799-1800W. LoFFT, Capel. Laura, 1814, nos. 31, 49, 51. 3:iS.,2lr. (Besides 
these, the anthology contains over 300 more of Lofft's sonnets, 
written after 1800, most of them irregular and many of them transla- 
tions.) 
1 799-1 809 w. 1811? p. Tighe, Mary ("Mrs. Henry"). Psyche, with other Poems, 
4th ed., 181 2, pp. I, 217-37, 268. 21 (i trans.): 3 P., i S., 17 Ir. 



696 BIBLIOGRAPHY IV 

1799-1813 Pratt, S. J. Gleanings in England, 2d ed., 1801-03, i. 579, ii. 140, 174, 

565-6,111.10-20; Lofft's Laura, no. 437. 16: ji 5. (i octosyllabic), 

5 /r. (i in eighteen lines). 
bef.iSoow.i Moore, Henry. Poems, 1803, pp. 127-34. 12 (i trans.): 2 S., 

JO Ir. (i octosyllabic) . 
bef.i8oow.? Fisher, John. The Valley of Llanherne, etc., 1801. Contains sonnets : 

see Henderson's Petrarca, 1803, pp. 179, 180. 

1800 Collier, William. Poems on Various Occasions [including Sonnets], 

with Translations, 1800. (16 of CoUier's sonnets, 1 2 of them transla- 
tions, are in Lofft's Laura.) 
DiMOND, William (the younger). Petrarchal Sonnets, etc., Bath, 1800. 

Contains at least 10 sonnets: see Mo. Rev., enl., xxxiii. 318-19. 
Sherive, C. H. Southey's Annual Anthology, ii. 151. i Ir. 
T., J. W. lb. 147. ilr- 
1800-1814 Bannerman, Anne. Poems, new ed., Edin., 1807, pp. 43~S4> 67-74, 

93-105; Lofft's Laura, no. 243. 28 (7 trans.): 14 S., 14 Ir. 
1800-1803W. Finch, S. W. (Mrs. Lofft). R. Bloomfield's Farmer's Boy, 3d ed., 
1800, prefatory; Lofft's Laura, i8i4,nos. 3,4,39, 4I-S.47-8, 52-61, 
66-70, 73, 75, 94. 2Q (2 trans.): i P.,6 S., 22 Ir. 
Symmons, Caroline. Poems, 181 2. Probably includes the 6 sonnets 
(3 P., 3 Ir.) appended to F. Wrangham's Raising of Jairus' Daughter, 
1804, pp. 21-3, 32-4. 

1 801 Anon. The Lamentation, in two parts, 1801. Contains sonnets: see 

Mo. Rev., enl., xxxvii. 9-10. 
1802-22 White, Henry Kirke. Remains, ed. Robert Southey, 5th ed., 1811- 

22, i. 373-4, ii. 53-6, 58-9, 101-14, 144, iii. 108, 112-13; Mo. Mirror, 
xiii. 343, xiv. 199. 2j (i trans.): 7 S., 20 Ir. {1 in blank verse, 
thirteen lines) . 



I 



A. SONNETS IN IMITATION OF MILTON'S 

1738 2 Anon. A sonnet, in imitation of Milton's sonnets.— Lond. Mag., vii. 356. 

1743 w. YoRKE, Charles. [Two sonnets] in imitation of Milton.— P. C. Yorke's 

Life of Philip Yorke, Camb., 1913, i. 292, ii. 147. 
1747 Anon. Hope, a sonnet, written in the stile of Milton.— Lond. Mag., xvi. 

382. (Consists of two elegiac stanzas.) 
1786 R., M. H. P. Sonnet, in the manner of Milton. — Europ. Mag., ix. 53. 

1791 T., W. A sonnet, in the manner of Milton. — lb. xx. 220. 

Weston, Joseph. Allegorical sonnet, in imitation of Milton.— Gent. Mag., 
Ixi. 660. 

1792 "luLUS Alba." To the nightingale. — Europ. Mag., xxi. 221. 

Weston, Stephen. Sonnet xxix. — Poems by Gentlemen of Devonshire and 
Cornwall, 1792, ii. 223. 

1793 "Nemo." Burlesque imitation of Milton's famous sonnet written "on the 

intended Attack upon the City." — Gent. Mag., Ixiii. 262. 



' There is some reason to believe that the following persons who published sonnets may have begun 
writing before 1800: Peter Bayley, Thomas Brown, George Dyer, Mrs. B. Finch, Thomas Gent, William 
Crowe, Nathaniel Humfray, Thomas Noble, Mary Sewell, Viscount Strangford (translations), Theophilus 
Swift, Charles Hoyle. The anonymous anthology, Sonnets of the Eighteenth Century (1809), I have not seen. 

2 In 1714 an anonymous 42-line poem called To Aristus, in Imitation of a Sonnet of Milton, appeared in 
Steele's Poetical Miscellanies, 116-19. 



SONNETS 697 

1800 w. LOFFT, Capel. Imitation: To Miss Finch, on her birthday.— Laura, no. 51. 
1802 Anon. Sonnet on a broken pair of snuffers, in imitation of Milton.— Europ. 

Mag.jxli. 208. 
"Florimel." Sonnet. — Scots Mag., Ixiv. 593. 
1807 Brydges, Egerton. Sonnet to the Rev. Cooper Willyams.— Poems, 4th 

ed., 1807, p. 24. 
1820 Wordsworth, William. On the detraction which followed the publication 

of a certain poem.— Poetical Works, 1896, vi. 212. 
1827 Taylor, John. An imitation [of Milton], on receiving an invitation from 

William Porden.- Poems, 1827, i. 188-9. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Figures in italics refer to pages in the appendices and bibliographies; figures in 
parentheses indicate the number of times authors are listed on the pages in question. 



Abolition of Catholicism, 567, 684. 

Adams, C. F., 26. 

Adams, T., Trafalgar, 27811. 

Addison, J., Account of English Poets, 

1311., 38; Battle of Cranes, 108, 318; 

Milton's Style Imitated, 55, 78, 104-5; 

on J. Philips, 96; praises M., 11 n., 14, 

38, 422; prosody of, criticized, 61; 

Spectator papers on P. L., 5 n., 14-15, 

22, 34 n., 36 n., 80 n., 122, 286 n. — 

637, 669. 
Adney, T. , 677. 
Aeschylus, translated, 340 n., 344 n., 346- 

51- 

Aikin, A. L. See Barbauld, Mrs. 

Aikin, J., on All. and Pen., 10; on blank 
verse, 67 n., 138; on J. Philips, 100; 
on Lycidas, 421 n.; on M., 23; on 
Thomson, 126. — 656, 6g2. 

Aird, T.,<5(57. 

Airy, H., 672, 682. 

Akenside, M., 40, 258; admires M., 390- 
92; Hymn to the Naiads, 391-2; influ- 
enced by All. and Pen., 449-50, 471; 
influence of, 292, 378, 388-9 n., 391-3, 
394 n., 401; Inscriptions, 388-9 n., 391; 
parodied (?), 450; Pleasures of Imagi- 
nation, 46, 125, 141, 144, 386-91, 402, 
471; The Poet, 321 n. — 640, 642 (2), 
646, 66g, 670. 

Alford,H.,<Jd7. 

Alfred, epics on, 298 and n. 

Alley, J., Judge, 378, 662. 

Allston, W., sonnets of, 546. 

Alves, R., 675 (2). 

Am.oxy,T., 628. 

Anderson, R. , 694. 

Andre, Pere, de Rouen, 360 n.,634 (1777). 

Andreini, G.,Adamo translated, 163, 174. 

Andrews, R., Eidyllia, 44, 51; Virgil, 325, 
2,2g. — 645,650. 

Anstey, C,652 (1773); Neiv Bath Guide, 
468, 673. 

Anstey, J., 632. 

Anti-Jacobin, 316, 467, 678 (1798). 

Aram, P., 629. 



Armstrong, John ("Albert"), 6gi. 

Armstrong, John, M. D., 125, 364-5, 
378 n.; on rime, 49, 5on.; poem on win- 
ter, 124, 129, 238 n. — 625, 640, 642. 

Arnold, C, Commerce, 383; Distress, 383. 
-643(2). 

Arnold, M., on translation, 325, 326, 
334 n., 338; on Wordsworth, 189, 191; 
Sohrab and Rustum, 278, 313-14, 315; 
sonnets of, 544-5; Thyrsis, 555; un- 
rimed lyrics by, 565. 

Art of Candle-Making, 380-81, 662. 

Ashbumham, W., 693. 

Astle, D., 627 n. 

Athenian Mercury, on M., 13 n., 423. 

Atkinson, J., 631. 

Atterbury, F., 6, 17-18, 117. 

Augustans, the, attitude of, towards M., 
6-20; knew P. L. before Spectator 
papers, 15; non-lyric, 419; poetry of, 
criticized by Thomson, 129-30. 

Austen, J., on Cowper, 437. 

Austin, W., 679. 

Averay, R., 645. 

Awbrey, J., 647. 

Ayres, H. M., 442 n. 

Ayres, P., 428, 489 n. 

Badcock, Mr., 654. 
Bagot, L., 647, 648. 
Bailey, P. J., influenced by P. L., 232-3, 

667 (3). 
Baker, H., Invocation of Health, 100 n., 

445, 638, 669. 
Bally, G., 644, 645 (2), 646. 
Bampfylde, C. W.,674. 
Bampfylde, J., sonnets of, 506, 509 n., 

512, 519 n., 525, 688. 
Bannerman, A., 696. 
Barbauld, Mrs. A. L., To Spring, 562. — 

650, 652 (2), 657, 659 (2), 664 (2), 665, 

666, 674, 679, 682. 
Barford, R., 627. 
Barker, J., sonnets of, 489 n. 
Barlow, Joel, Coliimbiad, 278 n. 
Barlow, John, 663. 



702 



INDEX 



Barnard, E.,(54<5. 

Barnard, M., Odyssey, 340. 

Barnes,B., 563 n. 

Baron, Richard, praises M., 8n., 27, 33, 

41- 
Baron, Robert, plagiarizes M., 427-8, 

55f , 556, 566, 669, 681, 684. 
Barrington, S., 647. 
Barrow, I., on M., 18, 21, 27 n. 
Barton, R., 432,(541. 
Batheaston, literary coterie at, 477, 

674-5- 
Baughan, B. E., 668. 
Bayley, C, 664. 
Bayley, P., 662, 6g6 n. 
Beatson, J., 653. 
Beattie, J., on blank verse, 55; on diction, 

64, 116. 
Beattie, W., 681 (1844, 1845)- 
Beatty, A., 400 n. 
Beavan, E., 627. 
Becket, A., Socrates, 472, 559 n.; The 

Genii, 557-8. — 679, 682. 
Beckford, W., 694. 
Beckman, W., <545. 
Beers, H. A., 145, 375 n., 488 n. 
Bellamy, D., translates Muscipula, 108, 

318, 638. 
Bellamy, T., 655, 693. 
Beloe, W., 690. 

Belsham, W., Essays, 13 n., 50, 525 n. 
Benger, E. , Poems on Slave Trade, 268. 
Benson, W., admires M., 41-2; on blank 

verse, 45 n.,6i. 
Bentley, E., 677, 692. 
Bentley, R., edits P. L., 29-30, 113 n., 

115 n.; on M.'s fame, 7-8; on Pope's 

Homer, ^2:^. 
Beresford,B.,<5p4. 
Beresford, J., Aeneid, 329, 657. 
Berger, P., on Blake, 222 n., 223 n., 225. 
Betham, M.,<595. 
Betson, A., 13 n. 
Bickersteth, E. H., 414 "-, 668. 
Bidlake, J., The Sea, 265.-628, 658, 

693- 
Bigg-Wither, L., Odyssey, 339. 
Billinge, C, influenced by P. L., 409, 634. 
Billson, C. J., Aeneid, 332. 
Binyon,L., 668. 

Birch, T., 41, 425- 

Birmingham Halpenny, Upon a, 470, 646. 

Birrell, A.,336. 

Bishop, S., 658. 

Bisset, J., 631. 

Black, J., d^p. 



Blackburne, F. , 5, 31, 40 n., 41. 
Blackett, J. , (55i (181 1). 
Blackett, M. 'D.,677. 
Blackie, J. S., 324, 337. 
Blacklock, T., 644, 671, 677, 681 (1754). 
Blackmore, R. , epics by, 48, 90-93, 278 n. 
on J. Philips, 99; on prosody, 60, 62. — 

637 (4). 

Blackstone, W., Lawyer's Farewel, 449, 
670. 

Blair, H., on blank verse, 49-50; on M., 
10; on Pope, 13 n. 

Blair, R., Grave, 46, 77, 271 n., 383-5, 
472, 639. 

Blake, W., influenced by M., 217-28; 
likes Shakespeare's sonnets, 481 n.; not 
appreciated in i8th cent., 419, 420, 
437; on Wordsworth, 196 n.; unrimed 
lyrics by, 564. — 662. 

Blamire, S., 67 5, 677. 

Blane,W., 668. 

Blank verse, before M., 75; distinction 
between dramatic and non-dramatic, 
76-7, 346; i8th-cent. attitude towards, 
18 n., 30 n., 44-53. 75-9, 103, 104 n., 
105, 150, 285; little used by Gray- 
Warton group, 243, 436; M. on, 44; 
non-Miltonic, 625-6; not understood, 
55; popularity of, in i8th cent., 45-9; 
preferred for long, serious poems, 49; 
receipt for, 632 (1803); sonnets in, 
51 n., 496 n.; suitable for translations?, 
183, 324, 326 n., 327, 356, 358; Thom- 
son's influence on vogue of, 128. 

Bloomfield, N., Essay on War, 399 n. 

Boaden, J.,<5(5/. 

Boileau,N., 19, 20, 38,36on.,<Jj2 (1683). 

Bolland, W., 659, 660 (2). 

Booker, L., Hop-Garden, 365-7, 371-2; 
Knowle Hill, 254 n.; Malvern, 254. — 
6S5 (2), 6j6n., 660 (2), 663, 682. 

Boothby, Sir B., 687. 

Boscawen, W., 676, 678. 

Boswell, J., 452, 498, 686. 

Boswell, J., the younger, 481. 

Bounden, J., 663. 

Bouton, A. L., loi n. 

Bowden, S., 627, 671. 

Bowdler, J., 654. 

Bowick, J., 679. 

Bowles, W. L., Son., 159, 253, 462, 
513 n.; borrows from Comus, 556; 
influenced by P. L., 256-7; sonnets of, 
488, 499 n., 510-14, 517, 518, 519, 529. 
— 628, 660, 662 (2), 664, 665, 666, 
667 (2), 679, 681 (2), 689. 



INDEX 



703 



Boyse,S., 628. 

Bradburn,E.W.,P.Z. for Children, 26,36. 

Bradbury, S., 6^3. 

Bradford, A.M., (555. 

Bradley, W., 295 n., 296 n. 

Brady, N. , Aeneid, 106, 638. 

Bramston. J., on blank verse, 48-9. — 

633, 642. 
Bray, E. A., 6g4. 
Breval, J. D. de, 633. 
Bridges, R., Keats, 207 n., 209 n., 211 n., 

213 n., 214 n. — 668. 
Bridges, T., 64g. 
Brinckle, J. G., Eleclra, 351. 
British Apollo, 13 n., 102, 121, 625, 63J. 
Broadhead, H. T. , 647. 
Bronson, W. C, 456 n. 
Brooke, H., Constantia, 448. — 642, 670. 
Broome, W. , Homer, 16, 106; influenced 

by Lycidas, 426; influenced by Pen., 

445-6. — 63Q,66g. 
Broughton, B., Views, 271 n., 661. 
Brown, James, D. D., Britain Preserved, 

284 n.,660. 
Brown, James (freemason), 6go. 
Brown, John, D.D., poem on moonlight, 

242-3. — 643, 673. 
Brown , N. , North-Country Wedding, 429 n. , 

638. 
Brown, R.,<55p. 
Brown, T., Lectures on the Mind, 401; 

Renovation of India, 401. — 66 3 {2), 

6p6n. 
Browne, I. H. , De Animi Immortalitate, 

343; Pipe of Tobacco, 450-51. — 640, 

669, 672. 
Browne, M., imitates Lycidas, 425-6, 

550; poem to, 641 (1738). — 626, 629 

(2), 639, 641, 643, 680. 
Bruce, M., admires Thomson, 127; influ- 
enced by P. L., 246-7. — 649, 650, 680, 

682. 
Bryant, J., AnUent Mythology, 345, 652. 
Bryant, W. C, Homer, 339-40. 
Brydges, S. E., on M.'s sonnets, 482 n., 

508; on the sonnet, 499, 522, 523; son- 
nets of, 508-9. — 662, 666, 676, 688, 

697. 
Bryson, W. A., 631, 681 (181 2). 
Buchanan, J., Six Books of P. L., 26-7, 

3S.67n. 
Buckingham, Duke of, Essay on Poetry, 

16, 361, (5 J2. 
Budworth, ^., Windermere, 274 n. 
Bulkeley, J., 638. 
Burges, G., Ajax, 350, 667. 



Burges, J. B., Exodiad, 287; Richard I, 
278 n. — 661, 663. 

Burgess, , 674. 

Burghclere, Lord, Georgics, 333-4. 

Burgoyne, General, 676. 

Burke, E. , admires Young, 158; elaborate 
style of, 67, 143; praises M., 9-10, 27. 

Burlesque blank-verse poetry, 15, 96-100, 
107-8, 15911., 163-5, 272 n., 315-22, 
363-4,380-81. 

Burnet, G., praises P. L., 12. 

Bmney,C., 688. 

Burney, F., 284, 364, 551 n. 

Burns, R., 499, 506, 679 (1811), 681 
(1796); admires Satan, 42. — 691. 

Burrell, Lady S., Thymbriad, 345-6. — 
657, 677. 

Burt, T. S., Aeneid, 330 n. 

Busby, T. , Lucretius, 343 n. 

Bushe, A., Socrates, 346, 646. 

Butt, G., 648. 

Butt, T., 676. 

Byrom, J.,30, 344. 

Byron, Lord, 28 n., 310 n., 315, 316, 413; 
description of the sea, 263; influenced 
by P. L., 231-2; Manfred, 308; narra- 
tive poems by, 279; on Grahame, 
266 n.; on Milman, 308 n.; on Sotheby, 
304 n.; on the Cottles, 297, 298 n.; on 
the epic, 277; Pollok on, 411; sonnets 
of, 536-7. — 665, 681 (1816). 

Bysshe, E., Art of Poetry, 55, 56, 58, 59, 
60, 423. 

Caldcleugh, W. G., Iliad, 339. 

Callander, J., 649. 

Callimachus, imitated, 391; translated, 

io5>_344- 

Cambridge, M. popular at, 27-8, 404-5, 
626 (1748), 640 (1733), <^44 (1751), 648 
(1761, 1762), 649 (1763), 670-71 (1748), 
671 (175s), 672 (1761), 673 (1763), 680 
(1751)- 

Campbell, L., Aeschylus, 350; Sophocles, 
325 n., 350. — <5<55 (2). 

Campbell, T., 337 n., 393, 666, 667, 681. 

Campion, T., 563 n., 565. 

Canning, G., 6^9. 

Canton, G., 65611. 

Capell, E., Iliad, 335 n. 

Carey, G. S., 632. 

Carey, H., 626, 639. 

Carlisle, Earl of, 661, 695. 

Carnarvon, Earl of, Odyssey, 340. 

Carr, J., Filial Piety, 320, 649. 

C&Ti,W.W.,68i,687. 



704 



INDEX 



Carrington, N. T., Dartmoor, 258, 666. 

Carter, E., 672, 686. 

Carter, G. , 644. 

Cartwright, E., 687: 

Cary, H. F., 26011., 276; Dante, 354-6; 
Mountain Seat, 255; sonnets of, 502-3. 
— 657,659,676,691. 

Carysfort, Earl of, Revenge of Guendolen, 
306, 655. 

Casa, G. della, sonnets of, 485 n. 

Case, W., 660, 661, 695. 

Casimir, translated, 563, 651 (1772). 

Cervantes, M. de, 508 n. 

Cessieres, G. de, 360 n. 

Chalmers, A., 66 n., 272 n. 

Chamberlayne, J., 632. 

Chamberlin, M., 410 n., 661 (2). 

Chandler, M., 629. 

Chapone, H. M., 496, 670, 686. 

Chatterton, T., Keats on, 207; other po- 
ems on, 553, 680 (1790 w.), (5^3 (i78_5)._ 

Chaucer, G., 441, 448, 461; Mason imi- 
tates, 551; modernized, 670 (1741); 
Wordsworth on, 187. 

Cheetham, R. F., Odes, 502, 694. 

Children, G., 647. 

Choheleth, 407, 650. 

Churchill, C, parodies imitations of All. 
and Pen., 467-8; ridicules Ogilvie, 
396-7. — 672. 

Cibber, T., Lives, 22, 142, 425. 

Clare, J., Autumn, 563; similar to Bamp- 
fylde, 506; Solitude, 476. — 679, 684. 

Clarke, E., 645 n. 

Clarke, J., Telemachus, 341 n., 652 n. 

Classicism in i8th cent., 48, 392, 433-4> 
436, 552. 

Claudian, translated, 343 n. 

Cleaver, W., 647. 

Clifford, C. C, Prometheus, 350, 667. 

Clifford, Charles. See Ireland, W. H. 

Clough, A. H,, 326, 337. 

Clough, B. C.,567n. 

Cockburn, W.,6(52 (2). 

Cockings, G. , epics by, 278 n. 

Cole, J.,<55.S. 

Cole, T., Life of Hubert, 271 n., 658. 

Coleridge, H., on Mason, 377. 

Coleridge, S. T., Ancient Mariner criti- 
cized, 254; friend of J. Cottle, 297; 
influenced by All. and Pen., 473; influ- 
enced by Lycidas, 553; on Bowles, 510, 
514 n.; on Petrarch, 485; on the epic, 
297; on the sonnet, 67, 486 n., 516, 
522; on Thomson, 126; part in Joan 
of Arc, 288; praises Crowe, 253; son- 



nets of, 513, 514-16, 517, 519, 520; 
sonnet to, 546 n. — 677 (2), 680, 690. 

Coleridge, Sara, 563, 684. 

Collier, J. P., 7sn.,342n. 

Collier, W.,(5p<5. 

Collins, J., (5^7. 

Collins, W., 441, 442; admires Thomson, 
128; avoids blank verse, couplets, 
and long poems, 434-6; friend of J. 
Warton, 462, 566; influence of, 467, 
469, 538, 562, 564-5. 682; influ- 
enced by All. and Pen., 431, 453-7; 
not appreciated in i8th cent., 419; 
praised, 251 n., 564, 565 n.; praises M., 
37; similar to Akenside, 392; To Even- 
ing, 438, 561-2, 564-5; uses Nativity 
meter, 565-6. — 669, 670, 682, 684. 

Colman, G., adapts Comus, 432-3; paro- 
dies by, 467, 672. 

Colombine, P. , 694. 

Colvill, R. See Andrews, R. 

Colvin, S., on Keats, 201 n. 

Comberbach, R., on blank verse, 30 n., 
5in.,344,<545. 

Conders, J. , 679, 684. 

Congreve, W., 16, 24, 147 n. 

Conington, J., on translation, 329 n., 
330 n. 

Constable, J., quotes P. L., 11 n. 

Contentment, 451, 669. 

Cooke, H., praises M., 61 n. 

Cooke, J., 672. 

Cooke, W., 634. 

Cooper, E., Bewdley, 271 n. — 646, 649, 
672. 

Cooper, J. G. , Estimate of Life, 45 1 ; Power 
of Harmony, 271 n., 393-4, 471 n. — 
642, 670. 

Cooper, L., 184 n., 198 n., 607 n. 

Coote, R., 634. 

Cornhill, S.,<555. 

Cory, H., 569 n. 

Cotgrave, J., Treasury of Wit, 423. 

Cotter, G. S., 627. 

Cottle, J., Dartmoor, 258 n.; epics by, 
297-300; friendship with lake poets, 
288, 297; Malvern, 254; on poetic dic- 
tion, 299. — 631, 660, 661, 664, 665, 
681 (1795)- 

Cotton, C, sonnets of, 489 n. 

Couplet, the heroic, conventionalizing in- 
fluence of, 237, 246; little used by the 
Gray-Warton-Collins group, 243, 434; 
not used in best i8th-cent. descriptive 
poetry, 237 n. See also Blank verse, 
Rime. 



INDEX 



70s 



Courtenay, H., 647, 648 (2). 
Courtier, P. L,., Pleasures of Solitude, 393, 
399 n.; Revolutions, 399 n. — 6^8, 678, 
694. 
Coventry, F., 67/. 
Coward, W., 13 n. 
Cowley, A., 117, 441, 442. 
Cowley, H., 278 n., 630. 
Cowper, A., on rime, 52 n. 
Cowper , W. , 656 ( 1 788 w. ) ; admiration for 
M., 6, 10, 21, 24 n., 25 n., 26, 161-3, 
175-6; borrowings from M., 603-6; 
Coleridge on, 514 n.; diction of, 
167-9, 172 n., 175-6, (5o<J; Four Ages, 
173; Homer, 170-72, 325, 334, 335-7, 
338, 340; On Finding Heel of a Shoe, 
163; on Johnson's Milton, 31, 162; 
on J. Philips, 96; on parentheses, 
169; on Pope, 58; on Warton's Mil- 
ton, 32, 162, 17s; prosody of, 63, 175; 
remarkable memory of, 161; sonnets 
of, 510; Thunder Storm, 175 n.; To 
the Halibut, 172 n.; translates ^</a>MO, 
174; translates M.'s Latin poems, 
163, 172 n.; YardleyOak, 173. — 643, 
650, 654, 655 (2), 656, 657 (3), 660, 
690. 
Task, 46, 69, 149, 161-76, 177, 331; 
aphoristic style of, 158, 166 n.; influ- 
ence of, 254, 259, 260, 261 n., 265, 
273, 291, 519 n., 656 (Aikin). 
Cowper, W., M.D., 7/ Penseroso, 448, 670. 
Crabbe, G., influenced by M., 471 n.; on 

J. Philips, 96.-653. 
Cranch, C. P., Aeneid, 326 n., 332. 
Crane, R.S., 69 n. 
Cranwell, J., 343 n. 
Crawford, C, The Revolution, 284. — 

627, 653, 664. 
Creech, T., Lucretius, 342. 
Crespigny, Lady Champion de, 681 

(1810). 
Cririe, J., descriptive poems, 271 n., 656, 

662. 
Croly, G.,631. 
Crosfield, A., 626, 627. 
Crosse, R., 647. 

Crowe, W., Lewesdon Hill, 69, 253-4, 
259; Treatise on Versification, 76, 254 n. 
— 656, 657, 696 n. 
Cudworth, W., Homer, 341. 
Cumberland, G., 630. 
Cumberland, R., 277 n., 553; influenced 
by P. L., 285-7; on Johnson's Samson 
critique, 32 n.; on the English lakes, 
274 n. — 642, 645, 657, 663. 



Cunningham, P., Leith Hill, 252-3. — 

628,^ 653, 690. 
Curteis, T., Eirenodia, 112, 143 n., 639. 

Daintry, M. J., 651. 

Dallas, R. C. , Kirkstall Abbey, 271 n. , 6^9. 

Dalton, J., version of Comus, 432-3. — 
629,634,681. 

Damer, J. , 680. 

Damon, S. F.,on Blake, 219 n., 220 n. 

Daniel, , Clackshugh, 249 n., 645. 

Daniel, S., 479. 

Dante, influence on Keats, 213; not ap- 
preciated before 1815, 354-5; thought 
inferior to Milton, 293; translated, 
352-6. 

Darby, S., 32 n. 

Darwall, Mrs. 5ee Whateley, M. 

Darwin, E., 521. 

Davenport, R. A., 695. 

Davies, E., 630, 676. 

Davies, J.,<55/ (1844). 

Davies, S., influenced by All. and Pen., 
471; Rhapsody to M., 8n., 21 n. — 
641 (2), 642 (2), 646, 670. 

Davis, Miss, 674. 

Davis, T., (525. 

Day, J. , 690. 

Deacon, D., 656. 

Deare, J. R., Georgics, 328, 664. 

Defoe, D., 445; influenced by P. Z. , 15, 
loo-ioi; praises M., 15. — 637. 

Deism, influence of, loi n., 393-6. 

Delany, Mrs. , oratorio from P. L. , 29. 

Delille, J., 360 n., 634 (1789). 

Delia Cruscans, the, 505, 5x5, 519, 525, 
538-40, 681 (1788). 

Denham, J., Coopers Hill, 237, 248, 627. 

Dennis, J., 121, 122, 432; admires M., 
5> 7, 37, 38; influenced by M., 93-5, 
115 n., 423; on poetry, 33, Z9. — 637 

(3). 

Dennis, J., Age of Pope, 127, 488 n. 

Denton, T.,(55i (1755). 

Derby, Earl of, Iliad, 325, 338, 668. 

Dexmody, T., 553, 656, 680, 691. 

Descriptive poetry of i8th cent., 236-75; 
appreciation of wild nature in, 255, 
258, 263, 265, 268-9, 365, 396 n.; close 
observation in, 255-6, 262, 264-5, 269; 
contemporary attitude towards, 272-3; 
conventionality of, no indication of in- 
difference to nature, 236, 240-41; 
couplet not used in the best, 237 n.; 
descriptions in sonnets, 497-548; limi- 
tations of, 272; neglect of humble 



7o6 



INDEX 



beauty in, 248; observation rarely 
united with poetic power in, 263-4; 
parodied, 272 n.; turgidity of, 236-8, 
256. 5ee a/5(j Cowper,W., Thomson, J., 
Wordsworth, W., and Topographical 
poems. 

De Selincourt, E., on Keats, 202, 203 n., 
205-6 n., 211 n.,2i2 n.,214, 538, 540 n., 
541 n., 620 n. 

Despreaux, J. E. , 360 n. 

De Vere, A., Jr., sonnets of, 543, 547. — 
668. 

De Vere, A., Sr., sonnets of, 542. 

Diaper, W., 633. 

Dibdin, T. F., Bibliography, 379. — 664, 
695. 

Dibdin, T. J., adapts Comus, 432-3. 

Diction, i8th-cent. ideas on, 141-3; M.'s 
influence on, 63-8 (see also Cowper, 
Keats, Pope, Thomson, Warton,T. , Jr. , 
Wordsworth, Young); words familiar 
to 17th and 19th centuries unknown to 
i8th, 64, 116. 

Didactic poetry, esteemed in i8th cent., 
359, 360. See also Technical treatises. 

Dimond, W., 696. 

Dinsdale, J., 633. 

Disraeli, B., sonnets of, 546. 

Dissenters, fond of P. L., 33, 104. 

Ditis Chorus, 344, 654. 

Dixon, W. M., 3, 279. 

Dobson, A., 4, 568, 684. 

Dobson, W., Prussian Campaign, 283- 
4n.; translations by, 41, 328 n. — 

646 (2). 

Dodd, Dr. W., 317, 498; Explanation of 
Milton, 25, 34; influenced by M., 407- 
g. — 643, 646, 647, 650, 653, 672 (2), 
673, 686. 

Dodsley, R., "Dodsley's Miscellany," 
434, 492, 495, 496-7; influenced by M., 
367, 448-9; Museum, 21-2, 39. — 633, 
644 (2), 66g, 670. 

Doig, D., 630. 

Donoghue, J., 659, 6g$, 

Doughty, CM., (5(5^. 

Douglas, J., answers Lauder, 30. 

Downman, H., Infancy, 377-8; sonnets 
of, 471, 495 n-> 521. — <J47. 652, 656, 
662, 672, 673, 677, 686. 

Doyne, P., Delivery of Jerusalem, 356 n., 

647 n. 

Drake, N., on blank verse, 47 n.; on the 
sonnet, 481, 522 n.; praises All. and 
Pen., 10; praises Cumberland's Cal- 
vary, 286; praises Dyer's Fleece, 367 n.; 



praises Good's Lucretius, 343 n. — 66$, 
678, 692. 

Draper, J. W., 323 n., 552 n. 

Draper, W. H., Morning Walk, 248 n., 
644. 

Drummond, G. H., 689. 

Drummond, T., 645. 

Drummond, Sir W., Odin. 46 n., 69, 306- 
8, 665. 

Drununond, W. H., Clontarf, 255, 256 n.; 
Lucretius, 343 n.; Pleasures of Benevo- 
lence, 393; Trafalgar, 278 n. — 631, 
665, 667. 

Dryden, J., 23, 24, 77, 114, 191, 343; in- 
fluence of, 203 n., 552; Miscellany, 420; 
onM., 14, 20, 162,421; on rimed trans- 
lations, 324; St. Cecilia, 10; State of 
Innocence, 118-20. 

Duck, S., 359, 627. 

Dufresnoy, C. A., 343, 360 n. 

Duick, J., 629. 

Dunbar, Mrs. A. M., 184 n., do/ n. 

Duncan, J. , Essay on Happiness, 394, 648. 

Duncombe, J., praises M., 9n., 13 n. — 
633 (1736-54), 686. 

Duncombe, Mrs. See Highmore, S. 

Duncombe, W. , quotes Lycidas, 426, 
427n. 

Dunkin , W. , 6^2, 639. 

Dunster, C. , Homer, 336 n.; St. James's 
Street, 271 n. — 6j6, 687. 

Dupre de St. Maur, translates P. L., 35. 

Durante, C., 360 n., 632 (1686). 

D'Urfey,T., (525. 

Dwight,T., 278 n., (525 m. 

Dyer, G., on personification, 441 n.; on 
the monody, 553 n. — 660 (2), 661 (2), 
662, 677, 679, 681 (1802), 683, 696 n. 

Dyer, J., Country Walk, 446-7; Fleece, 
141, 240, 241 n., 251, 367-72, 374, 
381 n., 389 n.; Grongar Hill, 124, 240, 
241 n., 248, 251, 368, 420, 446-7, 452 n.; 
Ruins of Rome, 240-41, 251, 370. — 641, 
646, 669. 

Ear]e,W.B.,d45, (572. 

Edgeworth,R.L.,Poe/ry£.r/>/(ii«e</, 26,32. 

Edginton, G. W., Odyssey, 339, 668. 

Edridge, R., <5<52. 

Edwards, S., 641. 

Edwards, T., 389 n.; sonnets of, 492-6, 
498, 501 n., 522 n., 527, 68^. 

Eighteenth century, attitude towards 
neo-classic standards in, 20, 38-9; con- 
ventionality and conservatism of, 87, 
237; extensive use of poetry in, 359; 



INDEX 



707 



fear of being prosaic in, 67, 79, 138, 238; 
ignorance and dislike of Italian litera- 
ture in, 354-5, 485-6; ignorance of 
earlier English literature in, 64, 87, 116, 
480-81, 487-8, 495; love of the bound- 
less and grand in, 130, 370, 371, 387; 
narrow conceptions of poetry in, 55-6; 
opinions of its own literature, 379-81; 
poetry written by the uneducated in, 
359; prosaic conception of poetry in, 
359-60, 378; solid things of literature 
valued in, 9, 34; turgidity of poetry in, 
141-5, 236-8, 256; wildness of Milton 
and Spenser attractive to, 13 n., 36-40, 
60, 64. See also Augustans, Blank verse, 
Diction, Milton, J., Moralizing, Pros- 
ody, Sonnet, Spenser, E. 

Ekins, J., 648. 

Eliot, G., on Young, 149 n. 

Elliott, E., familiar with P. L., 25; son- 
nets of, 543. — 660, 666, 681 (1876). 

Ellis, G.,<5 JO. 

Elphinston, J., 634. 

Elton, C. A., on blank verse, 76; transla- 
tions by, 336, 344 n., S4S. — 664 (2), 
678, 681 (1820). 

Elton, O., 497 n. 

Emett, S., 6gi. 

Emily, C, 645. 

Ennius, translated, 344 n. 

Enys, D., 676. 

Epics of i8th and early 19th cents., 276- 
315; blank verse preferred for, son., 
278; defects of, 277-80; list of rimed 
epics, 278 n.; not popular, 277, 312; 
numerous, 276-7. See also Keats, J. 
{Hyperion) . 

Epistle from a Gentleman, 429 n. 

Euripides, translated, 346-51. 

Evelyn, J., (5 J2. 

Falconer, J., 647. 

Falconer, W., Shipwreck, 263. 

Fane, J., Monody, 555, 681. 

Fanshaw, J. , 647. 

Fanshawe, C, M., 6gi. 

Farley, F. E., 306 n. 

Farmer, R., 671. 

Farrell, S., 692. 

Farren, Miss, 675. 

Fawcett, John, 6^3. 

Fawcett, Joseph, Art of War, 399-400. — 

632, 658, 660, 695. 
Fawkes, F., Parody on P. L., 319 n. — 

647, 672. 
Fellows, J., 650, 651, 653. 



Felton, H., on J. Philips, 100; on imita- 
tion, 69. 
Fenelon, F., TeUmaque, translations of, 

341 and n., (555 (1787)- 
Fenton, E., 426; Homer, 16, 78 n., 106-7, 

116 n.; influenced by P. L., 16-17; on 

M.'s minor poems, 424, 425, 428. — 

638 (2). 
Fenton, R. , Memoirs, 40 n. 
Fergusson, R., influenced by M., 471 n., 

651 (2), 652, 674. 
Fernyhough , W. , 630. 
Field, B., parodies All., 467, 679. 
Fielding, H., Tom Jones, 279. 
Finch, A., 638. 
Finch, Mrs. B., 696 n. 
Finch, S.W.,<59(5. 
Fisher, J., 696. 
Fitchett, J., Bewsey, 258; King Alfred, 

277 n., 312. — 658,660. 
Fitzpatrick, R. , 676. 
Fletcher, T., Eternity, 51 n.; Aeneid, 104. 

— 625. 
Flowerdew, A. , 662. 
Foot, J., Penseroso, 159 n., 271 n., 360 n., 

397-8, 448, 651, 674. 
Ford,T.,<5(5j. 
Forster, N., 647. 
Fortescue, J. , Pomery-Hill, 248 n. — 627, 

644, 646, 647, 648 (2). 
Foster, J., praises M., 60 n. 
Foster, M.,(54(?. 
Fowler, B.,<57j. 
Fox, C. J.,32o,<5<5j (1806); on blank verse, 

66 n. 
Fox, W., Jr., La Bagatella, 262-3, ^^i- 
Fracastoro, G., 360 n., 632 (i686), 642 

(bef. 1745). 
Francklin, T., Sophocles, 347, 348. — 633, 

646. 
Frank, J. ,(570. 
Free, J.,<543. 
Freeman, R.,6jr. 
Frere,J.H., 316,659. 
Fuseli, J. H., "Milton Gallery," 29, 660 

(1799)- 

Gardiner, J., (5 J2 (1673). 

Garnett, R., 297. 

Garnsey, E. '^.,684. 

Garrick, D., borrows from M., 29; mono- 
dies on, 680 (i779)> 681 (i779» 1781). 

Gascoigne, G., Steele Glas, 75, 320. 

Gay, J., Wine, 15; on Blackmore, 90 n.; 
on Philips, 99 n., 107. — 632, 633, 637. 

Gent, T., 681 (1816), 696 n. 



7o8 



INDEX 



"Gentleman of Oxford." See Oxford, 
"Gentleman of." 

Geoffroy, E. L. , 360 n. 

Gessner , S ., translated , 3 5 2 . 

Gibbon, E., 67, 143, 306. 

Gibbons, T., Christian Minister, 377; 
translations by, 345 n. — 642, 643, 
651. 

Gibson, W., 651. 

Gifford, W.,so5. 

Gilbank, W., Day of Pentecost, 409, 656. 

Gildon, C, attacks rime, 51; on J. Philips, 
99 n.; on prosody, 60; praises M., 8 
and n., 34. 

Gillies, J., edits P. L., 35. 

Gisborne, J., 6jo. 

Gisborne, T., Walks in a Forest, 264-6, 
267,273,657. 

Glasse, J., 672. 

Glover, R., Athenaid, no, 281; Boadicia, 
77; Leonidas, 46 n., 56, 77, 125, 141, 
276-7 n., 277, 280-83; Leonidas, influ- 
ence of, on Southey, 289, 293 n.; Lon- 
don, 383; Medea, 559 n.; poem on 
Newton, 383. — 639, 640, 641, 655. 

Glynn, R., 646. 

Godwin, W. , 423 n. 

Goethe, J. W. von, Wordsworth on, 181. 

Goldsmith, O., on blank verse, 45; on J. 
Philips , 96 ; on prosody, 5 7 ; praises M . , 
8,9n.,38n. 

Goldwin,W.,d25. 

Gompertz, I., 666. 

Good, J. M., Lucretius, 342-3, 663. 

Good, J. W., Studies, 4 n., 8 n., 9 n., 12 n., 
16 n., 22 n., 23 n., 27 n., 32 n., 36 n., 
40 n., 45 n.,47 n., 52 n., 363 n., 427 n. 

Gordon, A., Prussiad, 283, 646. 

Gorton, J., 659. 

Gosse, E., 46-7, 488. 

Graham, C., 634, 658. 

Graham, R., 648. 

Grahame, J., 681 (181 1); on Thomson, 
126; poetry of, 266-71, 379. — 659, 
663 {2), 664. 

Grainger, J., on Young, 159; Sugar-Cane, 
373-5, 379-80. — 649, 671. 

Grandgent, C. H., 358. 

Grant, A., 675. 

Graves, R., 674, 677. 

' ' Graveyard poetry," and Blair, 384, 472; 
and Penseroso, 472; and Young, 472. 

Gray, T., 68-9, 109, 431, 441, 442, 680 
(17 71); admires Dante and Petrarch, 
490; borrows phrases from M., 458, 
459, 491; Elegy, 438, 551; influence of. 



306, 348, 466, 467, 469; influenced by 
All. and Pen., 457-9; love of nature, 
236; not popular, 273; on Akenside, 388 
n.; on diction, 64; opposed to blank 
verse, 243, 436; parodied, 467; praises 
M., 10, 37, 38, 60; revises Mason's 
poems, 69, 551; similar to Dyer, 368; 
sonnet on West, 490-91; translates 
Dante, 353; uses Nativity meter, 459, 
565. — 626, 670, 673, 684, 685. 

Great Shepherd, 406, 645. 

Greatheed, B., 505 n., 676, 689. 

Greek drama, translations of, 346-51. 

Green, G. S., New Version of P. L., 35 n. 
See also Oxford, "Gentleman of." 

Green, H., 674. 

Green, M., Grotto, 449 n. — 633, 669. 

Green, T., on M., 21 n. 

Green, W. C., Iliad, 340-41, 668. 

Greene,'E.B. , HeroandLeattder, Ti4$, 6^2 7t. 

Greene, J., 645 n. 

Greenwood, J., Virgin Aluse, 25-6. 

Greenwood, W., Shooting Excursion, 
271 n.,<555. 

Greever, G., 512 n. 

Grenville, J., 647. 

Greville, Mrs., 676. 

Grey, R., translates Browne, 343, 644. 

Grierson, C., 632. 

Groombridge, W., 691. 

Grotius,H., translated, 6n., 30 n., 623 
(1713), 640 (1732), 643 (1749)- 

Grove, H., influenced by M., 103-4; 
praises M., 21. — 625, 638. 

Grove, W., 672, 694. 

Grub-Street Journal, 65, ii4n., 116. 

Had wen, W. , 630. 

Ua\\,J.,674. 

Hall, W., sonnet by, 496 n., 686. 

Hallam, I., 632. 

Haller, W., Southey, 289 n., 389 n., 565 n. 

Halliday, Dr., 680. 

Hall-Stevenson, J., 671, 675. 

Hamilton, W., influenced by All. and 

Pen., 431, 451-3; translations by, 335, 

346.-642, 643 (2), 646, 669, 670. 
Hamley, E., 694 (2). 
Hampson, W. , 630. 
Handel, G., oratorios from M. ,28-9, 430; 

oratorio V Allegro, influence of, 451; 

poems to, 639 (bef. 1729), 646 (1760). 
Hanford, J. H., 296 n., 508 n. 
Hanmer, J., sonnets of, 543. 
Hardcastle, S., 633 (2). 
Hardinge, G., admires M., 7, 10, 501; 



INDEX 



709 



on Akenside, 386; sonnets of, 501 n. — 

67S, 687. 
Hardinge, N., admires M., 42; poem to, 

642 (Davies) . — 627. 
Hardy, T., 258, 272, 315. 
Harley, G. D., 657, 658-g, 681 (1786), 

695- 
Harrach, A., 98 n., 429. 
Harral, T.,(557 (1798). 
Harris, J., Concord, 394, 644. 
Harris, W. R., Napoleon, 313, 667. 
Harrison, A., 657, 6gj. 
Harrison, W. , 628. 
Harrod, W. , 644 n. 
Harrop, E. A., 694. 
Harte, W.,639. 
Hartis, C.T., 673. 
Harvey, J., Bruciad, 278 n. 
Hawkesworth, J., 643. 
Hawkins, T., Wars of Jehovah, 312-13, 

667. 
Hawkins, W., Aencid, 328, 649. 
Hay, W., 343 n- 
Hayden, G., 646. 
Hayden, J., Creation, 29. 
Hayes, S., 652, 653 (3), 654. 
Hayley,W. , friend of Blake, 218, 225, 226, 

228 n.; friend of Cowper, 163, 174; On 

Epic Poetry, 276 n., 302 n., 306; on 

Mason, 551; on Milton, 25 n.; sonnets 

of, 502, 503, 504, 519, 520. — 657, 676, 

688. 
Hayois, L., 360 n. 

Haz?,rd, J. , Conquest of Quebec, 283-4, 6jo. 
Hazlitt, W. , 126, 497. 
Headley, H., Invocation to Melancholy, 

247; on Pope, 58; sonnet of, 508 n. — 

655,683,689. 
Heard, W. ,<5jo. 
Hemans, F. D., 258 n., 631. 
Henderson, G., on the sonnet, 481, 484 n., 

498, 499 n., 522 n., 527. 
Henderson, S., Olga, 313. 
Henderson, T. S., 667. 
Henham, J., 632. 
Henley, J., Esther, 278 n. 
Henley, S.,<557. 
Henry, J., Eneis, 329, 667. 
Hepple, N.,488n. 

Herbert, H. W., translations by, 351. 
Herbert, W., Attila, 310-11, 313. — 661, 

663, 665, 667 (2). 
Heriot, G., poem on West Indies, 257-8, 

654- 
Heron, R. See Pinkerton, J. 
Hervey, J., Meditations, 46 n., 472. 



Hesiod, influence of, 360, 366, 374; trans- 
lated, 345. 
Hexameter, suitable for translations?, 326. 

Hey,J.,M, (5^P- 

Highmore,J.,343n. 

Highmore, S., 496, 646, 686. 

Hildreth, W., Niliad, 284 n.,660. 

Hill, A., epics by, 278 n.; on blank verse, 

44 n. — 626, 633. 
Hill, J., on P. L., 25 n. 
Hill, R.,(52p. 

Hill-poems. See Topographical poems. 
Hinchliffe, J., 644. 
Hinchliffe, W., influenced by All., 444-5; 

quotes Lycidas, 425. — 62 t, 641 n., 

669. 
Hoadly, B., influenced by All. and Pen., 

449, 670. 
Hoadly, J., influenced by M., 108, 317-18, 

448 n., 640. 
Hobhouse, T., 627. 
Hoblyn, R. , Georgics, 328-9 n. 
Hobson, T., Christianity, 405, 642. 
Hodson,W.,(550. 

Hog, W., Latin translations of M., 420. 
Hogg, T., (525. 
Holcroft, T.,(5p3. 

Holdsworth, E., Muscipula, 108, 317-18. 
Hole, R., 677, 692. 
Holford, M., 631, 695. 
Hollis, J., 649. 
Hollis, T., admires M., 6-7, 33, 40-42. 

See also Blackburne, F. 
Holloway, W., Scenes of Youth, 271 n., 

662, 6'78. 
Holmes, R., sonnets of, 506 n., 688. 
Homer, thought no greater than M., 

8, 17-18, 19, 20-22, 163, 293-4, 397, 

399 n., 501; translations of, 106-7, 334" 

41. 
Homer, V.,656. 
Hoole, J.,(55i {l^6o),686. 
Hopkins, C.jdjj. 
Horace, influence of, 96 n., 360, 367 n., 

633 (1725, 1729, 173s. 1742); M.'s 

translation from (5cc Milton, translation 

from Horace); translated, 79, 89, 90, 

336, 344- 
Hovv'ard, E., Caroloiades, 278 n. 
Howard, J. "i., Metamorphoses, 341-2, 663. 
Howard, L., 628. 
Howard, N., Bickleigh Vale, 258; Inferno, 

2,SA.-663{2),678,683. 
Hoyle, C., 631, 663 (3), 696 n. 
Huckell, J.,(52p. 
Hucks, J., 658, 695. 



yio 



INDEX 



Huddesford, G., Monody on Dick, 554. — 

677, 681, 686. 
Hudson, Rev. Mr., 673. 
Hughes, H., 6gs. 
Hughes, J., influenced by All. and Pen., 

104, 432, 442-3; on the sonnet, 489 n.; 

praises M., 18, 422, 428. — 66g (4). 
Hughes, T., (553. 
Hull, T., Moral Tales, 407 n. 
Hume, J., Inferno, 353-4, 664. 
Hume, P., notes on P. L., $ n. 
Humfray, N., 696 n. 
Hunt, L., influence of, on Keats, 201, 538- 

9; sonnets of, 537-8. — 661, 683, 695. 
Hunt, Mr., 654. 
Hunter, J., 695. 
Huntingford, T., 630. 
Hurdis, J., poetry of, 259-62, 267, 273, 

471 n., 656 (2), 657, 658, 661. 
Hurn,W.,<527, 675. 
Husbands, J., Miscellany, 28 n. 
Hutchinson, T., 532 n., 534 n., 535 n. 
Huxley, T., 36 n. 

// Penseroso (anon.), 447-8, 639. 

Image, J.,<55o. 

Imitation, i8th-cent. attitude towards, 

68-9, 159-60, 174, 490, 493, 696-7. 
Impey, E. B., Sylphs, 557 n., 682. 
Ingelow, J., 568, 684. 
Ireland, W. H., Angler, 378-9. — 6ji, 

663,664,681 (1811). 
Irwin, E., 693. 

Jackson, J., Gils-land Wells, 271 n., 659. 

Jackson, W.,<555. 

Jacob, G., 425. 

Jago, R., Adam, 29 n., 249-50; Edge- 
Hill, 249-51,650. 

Jamieson, J., Sorrows of Slavery, 268 n., 
656. 

Jeffreys, G.,<5 jj. 

Jekyll,J.,<5^7. 

Jemmat, C, 645, 651, 674. 

Jennens, C, 670. 

Jenner, C, 650 (2), 673. 

Jennings, H. C, translates Dante, 353. 

Jennings,J., 657, 693. 

Jenyns,S., 343 n., 633. 

Jephson, R., burlesques P. L., 319 n., 
653 (2). 

Johnson, C. F., Lucretius, 343. 

Johnson, J., 694. 

Johnson, S.,94, 317 n., 371, 377 n., 396 n., 
652 (Fergusson); and W. Lauder, 30- 
31; dislikes M.'s politics, 40, 41, 43; 



elaborate style of, 67, 143; helps Dr. 
Dodd, 408; life of M., 30-32, 41, 162, 
508; on Akenside, 387-8; on blank 
verse, 44, 47, 48 n., son., 53, 55, 76, 
158; on Brady's ylewe/t/, 106; on diction, 
64 n., 66, 142, 143; on Dyer, 367 n., 
380; on Gray, 258, 526; on J. Philips, 
99,315; on Lycidas , i^2i; onM.,i3n., 
32; on M.'s sonnets, 521; on nature 
poetry, 262; on P. L., 8, 22, 26, 34; on 
prosody, 56-7; on Samson, 32 n., 182; 
on Shenstone, 321; on technical trea- 
tises, 379-80; on the sonnet, 521, 
526; on Thomson's Liberty, 147; on 
Hamilton of Bangour, 452; on Young, 

158. 
Jones, H., 629 (4), 632, 643, 644 n., 

650 (2). 
Jones, John, of Balliol college, 633 (1722). 
Jones, John, bishop of Cork, 657. 
Jones, John, ' 'an uneducated youth," 695. 
Jones, S., 628. 
Jones, Sir W., Britain Discovered, 67 n., 

277 n., 284. — 634, 651, 675, 687. 
Jonson, B., 24. 
Jordan, J., 627. 
Jortin, J., 24, 426, 657 (1793)- 

Kames, Lord, 50, 302 n. 

Keate, G., influenced by P. L., 241-2, 
283, 64s (2), 649, 671. 

Keate, W.,<5^5. 

Keats, J., 388, 681; borrowings from M., 
214, 620-24; diction of, 68, 205, 206 n., 
624; Fall of Hyperion, 209-13; Hy- 
perion, 201-14, 278, 279, 313, 315; 
Hyperion, defects of, 208-9; influenced 
by AIL, 476; on M., 202, 206-7, 213; 
sonnets of, 537-41; wherein like M., 
213-14. — 66s, 679- 

Keble, J.,563, (554 (2)- 

Kellet, A., 67 n., 653. 

Kemble, J. P., 681 (1823), 682. 

Ken,T., 278 n., 566 n. 

Kendall, W., (5^2. 

Kennedy, C. R., Virgil, 329-30, 667, 668. 

Kennedy, J. ,(537. 

Kennedy, R. , Virgil, 329-30, 667, 

Kenney,J.,(5(52. 

Ker,W.P.,466n. 

Kett,H., 507 n., (557, ^^S- 

Kiddell, H., on M., 427. — 629, 671. 

Kidgell, J., parodies Young, 159 n. 

King, H., Metamorphoses, 342, 668. 

King, W., 632, 633, 641, 685. 

Kipling, R., Recessional, 68 n. 



INDEX 



711 



Kittredge, G. L., 14 n. 

Klopstock, translated, 351-2. 

Knight, R. P., 298 n., 342 n., 634. 

Knight, S.,d5p. 

Knipe, E., 655. 

Knox, v., on blank verse, 45. 

Kyd, T.,442. 

Lacy, W., 630. 

Laing, M., on Ossian, 215-17. 

Lake country, J. Brown on, 242-3; well 
known before Wordsworth wrote, 273 n. 

Lamb, C, 182, 515; admires epics, 276; 
Old Familiar Faces, 565; on J. Cottle, 
254 n.; sonnets of, 515, 516-17, 518. — 

659, 693- 

Lambe, T., 680 n. 

Lampton, W. J., 555 n. 

Lancaster, N., Methodism Triumphant, 
320, 6so. 

Landor, W. S., 178 n., 277 n., 386; ad- 
mires M., 293-4; Gehir and other un- 
rimed poems of , 279, 294-7; Hellenistic 
classicism of, 296; influenced by Pin- 
dar, 294-6; on hexameters, 326; on 
M.'s sonnets, 482; on Russell, 507; on 
the sonnet, 535 n. — 658, 660, 662. 

Langhorne, J., 62p, 634, 646, 648, 651, 
672 (2), 673, 675, 681 (1759-69), 686. 

Langley, S., Iliad, 335, 650. 

Lardner, W. O., 317, 319 n., 661. 

Last Day, no, 121, 638. 

Lathy, T. P., Angler, 378, 634. 

Lauder, W., attack on M., 30, 496 n., 643 
(1750); imitates P. L., 30 n., 640. 

Laurence, J., 633. 

Lawler, D.,<557 (1804). 

Lay Monastery, 12, 18 n. 

Layard, C. P., 652 (2). 

Leapor, M., tf^j. 

Leather, M., 573 n. 

Lee, N., borrows from P. L., 14. 

Le Gallienne, R., 555. 

Le Grice, C. V., 632. 

Leigh, T.,647. 

Le Mesurier, T., 6Q4. 

Lemoine, H., 67^. 

Lennox, C, 633. 

Leslie, J., 629. 

Letchworth, T., 64Q-50. 

Lettice, J., translations by, 343. — 64g, 
658, 688. 

Lewis, , 628. 

Lewis, A. G., Iliad, 341. 

Lewis, R., 319-20, 645. 

Leyden, J., 681 (1802), (Jpj. 



Lickbarrow, I. , 664-3. 

Lilly, M. L.,36on. 

Lilly, W., 640. 

Lipscomb, W., 68 g. 

Lisle, H. M., 628 n. 

Lister, T., 6go. 

Lloyd, C., sonnets of, 515, 517-18, 525. 
— 660, 6g4. 

Lloyd, D. , Voyage of Life, 398-9, 657. 

Lloj'd, J. , 640. 

Lloyd, R., 27, 38 n.; Death of Adam, 351; 
on Blackmore, 90; on blank verse, 47, 
50 n.; on M., 40; parodies by, 467. — 
64g, 672 (2), 673. 

LlwydjR., 6p2. 

Locke, Miss, 677. 

Lockman, J., 341 n., 640 n. 

Lockwood, L.E., 85 n., 488. 

Loco-descriptive poems . See Topographi- 
cal poems. 

Lofft, C., Georgics, 328; Laura, 486 n., 
499 n.; on the sonnet, 484 n., 487 n., 
488, 519-20, 525-6.-654 (2), 660, 
685n.,6g5,6g'j. 

Lofft, Mrs. See Finch, S. W. 

Logan, M.,(5p2. 

Long, J. D., Aeneid, 332. 

Long, R,, 640, 644. 

Long poems, not written by Gray-Collins- 
Warton group, 434-5- 

Longfellow, H. W., Z?aM/e, 355; hexam- 
eters of, 326. 

Longinus, 19, 20. 

Loutherbourg, P. de, " Eidophusikon," 29. 

Lovell, E., 647, 648. 

Lovell, R., 518-19, 6g4. 

Lovibond, E. , 643, 650. 

Lowe, J., 662. 

Lowell, J. R., sonnets of, 546. 

Lowes, J. L., 194 n. 

Lucan, translated, 344; Pharsalia, influ- 
ences Southey, 289 n. 

Lucas, C., Temple of the Druids, 271 n. 

Lucas, E. v.. Swan and her Friends, 500. 

Lucretius, influence of, 328 n., 398 n.; 
translated, 45 n., 342-3. 

Lycophron, translated, 345. 

Lyrics, neglected by the Augustans, 419; 
unrimed, 51, 559 n., 560-65. 

Lyttelton, George, Lord, Monody, 552; 
on Leonidas, 280-81, 282 n., 283; on 
M., 19, 20, 66 n.; on Pope's Homer, 
324; relations with Thomson, 118 n., 
143. — 627, 63g, 648, 64g, 680.^ 

Lyttelton, Thomas, Lord, praises M., 
26n. — 631,634,674. 



712 



INDEX 



Macaulay, G. C, Thomson, 123 n. , 135 n., 
583 n. 

Macaulay, T. B., epic by, 277 n.; on R. 
Montgomery, 412-13. 

M'Donald, A.., 681 (1791), 6g2. 

Mackay, J. , 62S. 

McKillop, A. D., 233. 

Macpherson, J., influenced by M., 215-17, 
448 n., 671. 

Madan,S.,(554. 

Madden, W. B., 62Q. 

Main, D. M., English Sonnets, 507 n., 
511 n. 

Mallet, D., 77, 141; influenced by M., 
238-9, 429 n., 451, 638, 639, 642, 670. 

Malone, E., 481. 

Manners, Lady, 6g2. 

Manning, F. , 627. 

Mant, R., 522, $g^ n., 661. 

Marchant, J., on M., 23. 

Markland, A.,(5jj. 

Marlowe, C.,Lucan, 344 n. 

Marriott, Sir James, 671, 673. 

Marriott, John, 660, 682. 

Marriott, T., 27 n., 634. 

Martin, T. , Aeneid, 331-2. 

Marvell, A., 424 n. 

Maseres, F., 671. 

Mason, James, Georgics, 328 n. 

Mason, John, on rime, 51-2. 

Mason, W., 45, 68-9, 77, 674 (1771); 
avoids couplets, blank verse, and long 
poems, 434-6; English Garden, 375-7, 
378 n.; influence of, 266 n., 376, 467; 
influenced by All. and Pen., 459-61; 
Musaens, 551-2; on Samson, 559; ridi- 
culed, 258 n., 467; Sappho, 557; son- 
nets of, 496; translates Dufresnoy, 
343. — <5J4, 651, 670, 674, 675, 680, 
682, 686. 

Masque, the i8th-cent., 555-6. 

Massey, W., Remarks on P. L., 25. 

Masters, E. L., Spooniad, 321-22. 

Masters, M. K., Progress of Love, 373, 
663. 

Mathews, Mrs. C. ^ee Strong, E. K. 

Maude, T., 629, 630. 

Maurice, T., 317, 319 n.,628 {2), 630, 652, 
653, 680. 

Mavor, W., 630, 653, 693. 

Mawbey, J. , 676. 

Mawer,J.,(5jj. 

Maxwell, A., 629. 

Mayne, ¥.,681 (181 8). 

Meditative blank- verse poetry, 236-75. 

Meen, H., 650. 



Melancholy, i8th-cent. literature of, 
244-5 • ^^^ (^^^0 " Graveyard poetry." 

Melmoth, Courtney. See Pratt, S. J. 

Mercer, T. , 627. 

Meredith, G., 233. 

Merrick, J. , 671. 

Merry, R., 36-7, 505 n., 676, 683 (2), 
689. 

Messiah (anon.), 406, 649. 

Meyler, W., 675, 681 (1779), 694. 

Michell, R., 629. 

Mickiewicz, A., Pan Tadeusz, 315 n. 

Mickle, W. J., 32 n., 627, 649, 687. 

Middlesex, Lord, on Pope, 13 n. 

Midsummer Eve, 556-7, 682. 

Miller, Lady A. R., 477. See also Bath- 
easton. 

Miller, James, 632, 633. 

Miller, John (1754), 644, 671. 

Miller, John (1863), Aeneid, 330 n. 

Mills, W., Georgics, 328. 

Milman,H.H.,5awor, 277 n., 308-9, 313. 
— 665, 668. 

Milton, J., admired by Whigs, 40-42; i/ 
articles on, in Gentleman's Magazine, 
6; a touchstone of taste, 22-4; bur- 
lesqued {see Burlesque); criticized, 
12, 24, 29-32, 40, 43, 45, 57-8, 64-6, 
97, 103, 283, 421, 427, 428, 487 n., 
503, 509 n., 521, 560 n., 565 n.; dic- 
tion of, criticized, 64-6; fashionable, 
22-4; Latin poems of, 163, 172 n.; 
on blank verse, 44, 51 n., 222; pas- 
sion for liberty, 40; poems of, liked 
by children, 10, 25-7; political ac- 
tivities of, criticized, 12, 40, 43, 97; 
popularity of, 68-71 {see also Milton, 
praised); praised, 3-43, 60 n., 63, 91, 
97, 112, 161-3, 175-6, 179-83, 198, 
202, 238, 293-4, 363, 386, 397, 399/1;, 
421-8, 501, 508; prosody of, criti- 
cized, 57-8; rank of, among English 
poets, 10, 12-20, 126 n., 501; ranked 
with Homer and Virgil, 7-8, 17-18, 
19, 20-22, 163, 293-4, 386, 397, 
399 n.,501. 
minor poems, character of, 420; edi- 
tions of, 420; i8th-cent. attitude to- 
wards, 9-1 1, 421-32; influence of 
vogue of, on the sonnet, 526-7; less 
popular than P. L., 8-9, 420; not 
popular till 1740, 419-32; preferred 
to P. L., 464; reason for sudden 
popularity of, 433. See also poems 
by name. 
Allegro and Penseroso, analyzed, 439- 



INDEX 



713 



40; general nature of, 437; influence 
of, 218, 245, 439-77, 669-79; paro- 
died, 467-9; Penseroso and "grave- 
yard poetry," 472; praised, 9-11, 14, 
25, 28, 161, 421-4; vogue of, 467-72, 
476-7. See also minor poems. 

Arcades, 29. 

Comus, Comus as a person, 28; i8th- 
cent. editions of, 5; influence of, 218, 
555-8, 681-2; on the stage, 28, 432- 
3; praised, 10, 11, 14, 182. See also 
minor poems. 

Lycidas, a touchstone of taste, 419; 
i8th-cent. attitude towards, 10, 11, 
421, 424-7; influence of, 28, 549-55, 
680-81; set to music, 28-9. See also 
minor poems. 

May Morning, Song on, 28. 

Nativity, influence of, 218, 220, 228 n., 
565-9, 684; used by Handel, 430. 
See also minor poems. 

sonnets, 482-5; criticized, 487 n., 521, 
522, 527 n.; influence of, 478-548, 
696-7; influenced by Delia Casa, 
485 n.; neglected before 1738, 428; 
praised, 10, 482, 501, 502, 508, 532-3. 

translation from Horace, criticized, 
565 n.; influence of, 496 n., 560-65, 
dfe-4. 

Paradise Lost, characteristics of, 80-86; 
combines classic with romantic, 39- 
40, 48; conforms to classical stan- 
dards, 20, 38-40; diction of, 83-5; 
edited for the lowly, 34-6; editions 
of, 4-5; fear of criticizing, 6, 24; 
in New England, 26; in prose, 35; 
influence of, 22 n., 44-415, 637-68, 
682 n.; influence of diction of, 63-8; 
influence of prosody of, 54-63, 68, 
86; liked by the lowly, 24-5, 34-6, 
70-71; more admired than loved, 
25 n.; novelty of, in i8th cent., 36; 
pleasing wildness of, 13 n,, 36-40, 
60, 64; popularity of {see Milton, 
praised); preferred to M.'s other 
poems in i8th cent., 8-9, 420; present 
attitude towards, 3, 6, 9, 293; recom- 
mended for actors, 25 n.; religious 
character of, attracts readers, 33-4, 
104, 162. 

Paradise Regained, influence of, 95, 217, 
320, 549, 633 (1728); in prose, 35 n.; 
popularity of, 11, 40 n.; Wordsworth 
on, 182-3. 

Samson, 26, 28; Atterbury's plan for, 
117; criticized, 559 n.; influence of. 



118 n., 228, 346, 555-6, 558-9; used 
by Handel, 430; Wordsworth on, 182. 

prose works, i8th-cent. interest in, 
41; Areopagitica, 18, 41; History of 
Britain, 184, 220 n., 306, 614 (2); Of 
Education, 18, 183,377 n.; Pro Populo 
Anglicano, 293 n.; Reason of Church 
Government, 178 n. 
Milton, Marmaduke. See Dunster, C. 
Milton^ s Sublimity Asserted, 100 n., 638. 
Mitford, J., 667. 
Mitford, W., on prosody, 57. 
Moir, D. M., 667. 
Monboddo, Lord, 364; on blank verse, 

50; on M., 9 n., II n., 32 n. 
Monck, M., 62s, 627, 68 j. 
Monodies, burlesqued, 553-4; non-Mil- 

tonic, 553, 681; numerous after 1740, 

28, 680-81. 
Montagu, Lady M., on rime, 16, 52 n.; 

praises P. L.,16. 
Montesquieu, Baron de, 343. 
Montgomery, J., Alfred, 298 n.; Poems 

on Slave Trade, 268. — 693. 
Montgomery, R., influenced by M., 412- 

14, 666 is), 667 (3). 
Montolieu, Mrs., 634 (1789). 
Moody, E.,(57<J. 
Moody, W. v., 555. 
Moon, G.W., 668. 
Moore, A., 634. 

Moore, C. A., loi n., 372 n., 388, 445 n. 
Moore, H., Private Life, 471 n. — 677, 

678, 696. 
Moore, J. , 677. 

Moore, T., praises Crowe, 253. 
Moore, W.,<5<5(5. 
Moralizing in i8th-cent. poetry, 33-4, 

147, 249 n., 257, 264, 265 n., 300, 380; 

J. Wartonon,435. 
More, H., 498, 521, 654, 673, 687. 
Morel, L., Thomson, 145 n. 
Morgan, N., 648. 
Morgan, W., 631. 
Morrice, J., Iliad, 336 n. 
Morris, W., Earthly Paradise, 278. 
Morshead, E. D. A., Aeschylus, 350, 668. 
MoTton,S. W., 628 n. 
Mosby, J. N., Mount Sion, 412 n., 666. 
Motherwell, W., Melancholye, 476, 679. 
Moultrie, J., 667. 
Mountfort, D., 109 n., 126 n. 
Mugliston, W., 634 n. 
Mundy, F. N. C, 630, 695. 
Munford, W., //ia<i, 336. 
Munnings, J. S., 631. 



714 



INDEX 



Murphy, A., 633 (1736-54). 
Murray, G., translations by, 348, 358. 
Musaeus, translated, 345. 
Musgrave, G., Odyssey, 338-9, 668. 
Myers, E., 314, 315, 546, 668. 

Napier, G., 647. 

Nason, G., A phono and Ethina, 400-401, 

660. 
Nature. See Descriptive poetry. 
Nature, 398 n.,655. 
Neal, D., praises P. L., 8 n. 
Needier, H., loi n., 638. 
Neele, H., 47, 127 n. 
Neo-classicists, See Augustans. 
Neve, P., praises M., 8, 32 n., 36 n. 
Newbery, J. See Goldsmith, O. 
Newcomb, T., influenced by M., iio-ii; 

On P. L., 22 n.; translates Gessner, 

352; turns prose into blank verse, 46 n. 

— 638, 641, 646 (2), 649. 
Newman, F. W., on translation, 324. 
Newman, J. H., sonnets of, 546. 
Nichols, J. , 62g, 650. 
Noble, J. A., 488 n. 
Noble, T., Blackhealh, 255-6. — 664, 684, 

6g6 n. 
Norgate, T. S., Homer, 338. 
North, B., 648. 

Northmore, T., Washington, 278 n. 
Nott, S.,6^2. 
Noyes, A., Drake, 315; Last of the Titans, 

314, 668. 
Nugent, R., 6^4, 676. 

O'Brien, K., 554-5, 681. 

Ocean, the, appreciated, 2410., 374 n., 

376 n., 410 n., 650 (1766), 661 (1801); 

not appreciated, 263. 
Ode to Horror, 467, 6yi. 
Ogden, J., Crucifixion and Resurrection, 

4o6n.; epics by, 278 n. — 648 n. 
Ogilvie, J., Britannia, 277 n., 302-3; on 

moralizing in poetry, 249 n.; Providence, 

395-7; ridiculed, 258 n.; Triumphs of 

Christianity, 395. — 62g, 649, 661, 

672-3, 673. 
Oldisworth, W., 633 (1710). 
Oliphant, R., 693. 
Omond, T. S., 54 n., 61 n. 
Opie, A.,6j8, 683, 6gi. 
Oppian, 360 n., 633 (1722, 1736). 
Oram, S. M., 677, 6g2. 
Ossian, 46 n., 215-17, 660 (1800). 
Otway, F. , 671. 
Otway, T., 23. 



Oulton, W. C.,3S2. 

Ovid, translations of, 341-2. 

Oxford, M. popular at, 27-8, 647-8 (1761, 

1762), 672 (1761, 1762), 682 (1761-2); 

professors of poetry at, 17, 27, 106, 259, 

328,461,498. 
Oxford, "Gentleman of," New Version of 

P. L.,6, 24n.,35, 57-8, 79 n.; P. L. in 

prose, 35. — 688. 

Palmer, G. H., Odyssey, 334, 358. 

Palmer, J., 637 n., 662. 

Pancoast, H. S., 3. 

Panting, S., 673. 

Paradice Regain'd (anon.), 633. 

Paradise Regained (anon.), 320, 6^3. 

Pans, Mt., 637. 

Park, T. , sonnets of, 498 n. — 678, 6go. 

Parker, B., 641. 

Parnell, T. , admires M., 16; influenced 

by All., 420, 423, 444; on blank verse, 

49 n., 67 n. — 66g (2). 
Parsons, P., 644, 674. 
Parsons, W., 505 n., 676, 68g. 
Parthenia, 556, 682. ^ 

Pastoral, conventionalizing influence of 

the, 246. 
Paterson, J., Commentary on P. L., 7 n., 

25- 

Patmore, C.,476n.,555. , 

Patrick, J., d^d. 

Pattison, M., on Lycidas, 425. 

Pearce,W.,<555. 

Pearce, Z.,on M.'s minor poenls,422, 428. 

Pearson, S.,dp7. 

Peck, F., on diction, 64, 83; on M,, 80 n., 

83, 422, 424-5, 432. — 628, 638. 
Peers, C., 663. 
Pemberton, H., on Leonidas, 141-2, 

281 n.; on prosody, 56, 57. 
Penn, J., 6go. 
Pennant, T., 675. 
Pennie, J. F., epics by, 304-6, — 665, 

666 (2). 
Pennington, Mrs., Copper Farthing, 317, 

649- 
Penrose, T., 652, 653, 674. 
Penticross, W. , 628. 
Pepys, W. W.,M. 
Percy, T., sonnets of, 524 n., 686. 
Perfect, Dr., <575. 
Periphrases, 67, 137, 139, 141-2, 168, 

196-7. 
Personified abstractions, odes to, 440-41, 

470. 
Petrarch, sonnets of, little read in i8th 



INDEX 



715 



cent., 485-6. See also Sonnet (i8th- ' 
cent., Italian). 

Petronius Arbiter, translated, 344. 

Phelps, R., 645. 

Phelps, W. L.,4, 488n. 

Philipps, R.,d52. 

Philips, J., 124, 368; Cyder, 97-100, 
parodied, 165, 381 n.; influence of, 107, 
140, 144, 163, 315-17, 320, 361, 366, 
367 n., 374, 643 (1748, 1750), 645 
(1756); makes little use of M.'s minor 
poems, 115 n., 423; minor poems of, 
97-100; popularity of, 99-100, 121, 
170, 361; Splendid Shilling, 96-100, 
163. — <5i7(4),<544. 

Phillips, E., 424, 428. 

Phillips, S., Armageddon, 233, 668. 

Phillips, W. , Mount Sinai, 411-12, 666. 

Philoctetes, sonnet on, 507, 508 n. 

Philosophical poetry, 382-402. 

Philpot,C.,(556. 

Pindar, influence of, 93, 295-6; thought 
inferior to Milton, 294. 

Pindaric ode, influenced by Lycidas, 555 n. 

Pinkerton, J., 480, 521, 654, 675 (2), 688. 

Pitt, Q.,633, 639. 

Plato, translated, 346. 

Plumptre, E. H., on rimed translations, 
324; translations by, 349, <5(55 (2). 

Polignac, Cardinal de, Anti-Lucretius, 
328 n. 

Pollok, R., Course of Time, 410-11. — 
665 is), 666 {2). 

Polwhele, R., English Orator, 376-7; on 
the sonnet, 504-5; sonnets of, 502, 503, 
S20. — 631, 655 (2), 656, 658, 660, 
681 ii7g6), 683, 687. 

Poole, J., English Parnassus, 423, 425 n. 

Pooley, W., 672. 

Pope, A,, 10, 24, 33 n., 126 n., 154, 236, 
237, 280, 461, 493; admires Thomson, 
128; borrows from M., 1 14-15, 429, 
55°, 573-S3; criticized, 56, 58, 61, 323, 
335; diction of, 65, 115-17; edition of 
Shakespeare, 58, 480; epics by, 117-18, 
276 n.; Essay on Man, 150 n., 282, 402; 
followers of, not hostile to M., 14-20, 
108, 301 n., 552; Homer, 52, 106-7, 
115-17, 143, 172, 323, 324, 327, 334, 
335, 340; influence of, 58-9, 283, 629 
(1747); influenced by M., 65, 113-18; 
monody on,, 551, 680 (1744); on 
descriptive poetry, 272; on Hughes, 
442; on J. Philips, 99; on M., 15, 19, 
23, 421, 425, 432; prosody of, 146; 
Rape of the Lock, 316, 317; thought in- 



ferior to M., 12-13, 218 n., 227. — 628, 
633. See also Warton, J., Essay on 
Pope. 

Pope, W., blank verse of, 79 n., 90 n., 625. 

Porden, W., 674. 

Portal, A. , Innocence, 398, 648. 

Porter, A. M., 677. 

Porteus, B., 646. 

Potter, R., on blank verse, 52; onM., 25, 
26, 32 n,, 36; translations by, 347-8, 
471. — 629, 653, 654, 656, 675, 680. 

Prae-exisience, 109-10, 121, 638. 

Pratt, E., 634. 

Pratt, S. J., ("Courtney Melmoth"), 
Cabinet of Poetry, 126 n.; Landscapes 
in Verse, 247, 471 n.; on Young, 159. — 
652, 655, 676, 680, 696. 

Preston, W., sonnets of, 486 n. — 674, 
678, 688. 

Price, H., 641, 642. 

Prior, M., 24, 78 n.; criticizes the coup- 
let, 15, 59-60; influenced by M., 105, 
329 n.; praises P. L.,16. — 62^,638 (s). 

Probationary Odes, 467, 468, 556, 676. 

Prose translations, 325, 357. 

Prosody of i8th cent., M.'s influence on, 
54-63, 78-9, 86. 

Pullein, S.,633 (1723). 

Pye, Mrs. H., Philanthe, 471, 646. 

Pye, H. J., Alfred, 278 n., 298 n. — 627, 
634, 689. 

Pye, T., 627. 

Quebec, 284 n., 646. 

Quillet, C, 360 n., 633 (1710). 

Racine, translated, (54^(1754), 651 (1771). 

Radcliffe, A., 691. 

Ralph, J. , Muses Address, 51 n.; Night, 

55 n., 239; Tempest, 239; Zeuma, 280. 

— 632, 639 is), 641. 
Ramsay, A., Gentle Shepherd, 124, 129. 
Rannie (or Rennie?), J., 689. 
Rapin, R., 360 n., 632 (1673). 
Ratcliffe, H.,<5^7. 
Ravel, C. du, 360 n. 
Ravensworth, Lord, Aeneid, 331, 668. 
Raynsford, R., 682. 
Redding, C, 628. 
Reed, J., 64s . 
Reeve, J. , 630. 
Reid, A., on Thomson, 142. 
Reid, W. H., 636, 676, 681 (1791), 690. 
Religious poetry, 102-4, 109-12, 259-61, 

266-7, 284-7, 297-8, 309, 312, 402-15; 

not popular in i8th cent., 414. 



7i6 



INDEX 



Rennie, J. , 68q. 

Repetition, in Keats, 212 n.; in P. Z,.,8s; 
in Young, 154. 

Reynell, W. H.,<547. 

Reynolds, M., i24n., 130 n., 273 n. 

Reynolds, S. H. , 66'^. 

Rhoades, J., Virgil, 331, 668. 

Rhodes, T.,<530. 

Rich, E. P., <527. 

Richards, G., 679. 

Richardson, J,, friend of Dyer, 368; friend 
of Pope, 17, 113 n.; praises M., 7, 22, 
424; translates Dante, 352-3. — 625. 

Richardson, W., 6^0 (2), 632, 674, 679. 

Rickards, G. K., Aeneid, 331, 668. 

Rickman, T. C, 65S7 (>92. 

Ride through S tour head, 271 n., 65 j. 

Ridley, E., Lucan, 344-5, 668. 

Rime, Augustans object to, for transla- 
tions, 49 n., 324-5; criticized, 15-16, 
44-52, 112 n., 564. See also Blank 
verse. Couplet, Lyrics. 

Rinaker, C.,524 n. 

Ritso, G. , 629. 

Roberts, J. , 656. 

Roberts, W., 654 and n. 

Roberts, W. H., influenced hy P. L., 284- 
5; on blank verse, 45, 49, 5S- — <55^> 
652 {2). 

Robertson, D., Esq., 692. 

Robertson, D., of Edinburgh, 675, 689. 

Robin-Hood Society, 319-20, 645. 

Robinson, H. C, on Blake, 219, 225 n.; 
on Thelwall, 301 n.; on Wordsworth, 
182, 187, 196 n., 532. 

Robinson, M. ("Perdita"), odes to ab- 
stractions, 470; Progress of Liberty, 
401; sonnets of, 502, 503 n., 505 n., 
520. — 657 (2), 661, 677 (2), 681 (1806), 
683, 689. 

Robinson, Mr,, Killarney Lake, 271 n., 
655. 

Robinson, T,, 694. 

Rodd, T.,dp2. 

Roderick, R., sonnet by, 492 n., 686. 

Roflet, , 360 n. 

Rogers, C, Inferno, 353, 654. 

Rogers, Miss, 675. 

Rogers, S.,253, 337 n., 393- 

Rolli, P., 51 n.,432. 

Rolt, R.,299n.,36on.,<5^3, 681 (i750- 

Romans, I'Abbe, 360 n. 

Romanticism, 3, 123, 124, 242 n., 375, 
389 n., 454, 461, 472, 508, 513, 526, 

537- 
Ronsard, P. de, 540 n. 



Roscoe, W., influenced by P. L.,42, 269 n., 
498-9, 627, 656, 681 (1796), 687. 

Roscoe, W. S., Contemplative Day, 256 n.; 
Messiah, 351-2. — 666, 681, 695. 

Roscommon, Earl of, Art of Poetry, ss,19t 
89; Translated Verse, 16, 89, 122, 361. 

— 625, 632, 637. 
Rose, J. B., Iliad, 340. 
Rossetti, D. G., 541-2. 
Rough, W.,<5p5. 

Rowe, E., 23 n., 46 n.; influenced by M., 
104; knows M.'s minor poems, 426, 
429 n.; popularity of, 403. — 626, 637, 
638. 

Rowe, N., Ode for New Year, 444. — 
633 {2), 669. 

Rowe, T., 104, 637. 

Rugeley, G., 647, 648. 

Rusher, P. , 627. 

Rush ton, 'E.,681 (1806). 

Ruskin, J.,354-5. 

Russell, J., 648. 

Russell, T., sonnets of, 507, 512, 525, 690. 

Rutt,J.T.,dpj. 

Ryan,E.,d75. 

Sadler, M. T., Alfred, 298 n., 

St. John, J., 675. 

Sainte-Marthe, S. de, 360 n.,633 (1710). 

Saintsbury, G., 3, 54, 56 n., 58 n., 63, 

90 n., 127, 145 n., i73. 359» 386, 389, 

506 n., 514 n. 
Sansom, J. , 631. 
Santayana, G., Lucifer, 233. 
Sassoon, S., 568 n. 
Saurat, D., on Blake, 218 n., 224 n. 
Savage, R., 447. 
Say, S., influenced by M., 90, 104, 563, 

566-7; on prosody, 283; praises Ly- 

cidas, 426-7, 432; translates Horace, 

90, 344, 563. — 637, 641, 682, 684. 
Sayers, F. , Jack the Giant-Killer, 317 n.; 

unrimed lyrics by, 559 n., 564. — 683, 

691. 
Scandinavian mythology in i8th-cent.. 

poetry, 301, 305, 306, 308, 310, 461, 

557, 559 n-, 564- 
Scarisbing, F. S. , 657. 
Schomberg, A. C, Bagley, 258 n., 319 n. 

- 653, 687. 

Schomberg, G. A., Odyssey, 340. 

Scott, James, Redemption, 405 n. — 672, 

673,680(2). 
Scott, J. N., Homer, 335, 645. 
Scott, John, 57, 64; Amwell, 62, 246, 250- 

52, 254; Eclogues, 62, 246; Essays, 



INDEX 



717 



252 n., 421, 427; on Dyer, 367 n.; 

on Thomson's diction, 142, 143. — 6jj, 

673,686. 
Scott, T.,(5pj. 
Scott, W., 279, 310 n., 503; on Dryden, 

119, 120 n.; praises Grahame, 266 n. 
Seaton, T. , gives prize for religious poetry, 

404-5- 
Seccombe, T. , 127. 

Sedgwick, H. D., on translation, 325, 327. 
Sedley.C.,^.?^. 

Selincourt. See De Selincourt. 
Seward, A., admires M.'s minor poems, 
10, 25; ignorant of Italian sonnets, 
485; on blank verse, 45; on C. Smith's 
sonnets, 503 n.; on Elizabethan son- 
nets, 482; on Johnson's Milton, 32; 
on M.'s sonnets, 482, soon., 501; on 
Southey, 291; on the sonnet, 484 n., 
487, 500, 522, 524, 525; prose style of, 
67, 143; sonnets of, 499-502, 516, 520, 
523 n. — 630, 634, 655, 656, 65g, 661 
(2), 662, 675 (2), 680, 681 (1781), 686. 
Sewell, G., 96, 99. 
Sewell, M.,d9<5 n. 
Sewell, W., translations by, 330 n., 667 

and n. 
Shaftesbury, third earl of, loi n., 124, 

388, 394, 395 n.; praises P. L., 16. 
Shakespeare, W., diction of, criticized, 
142; editions of, 4-5; i8th-cent. 
attitude towards, 18 n., 20 n., 24, 
25, 114; influence of, 238 n., 331-2, 
384; rimed, 46; vocabulary of, 195; 
Wordsworth on, i8o, 181-2, 187. 
sonnets of, 47^, 479, 480; Blake on, 
4811!.; influence of, 491, 501 n., 
506 n., 523, 524, 540, 541; Keats on, 
540; not liked in i8th cent., 480-82, 
501 n.; Wordsworth on, 534 n. 
Sharp, J.,d^<^. 
Sharp, W., 647. 
Sharpe, J., 6jg. 
Shaw, C.,<55i (1768). 
Shelley, H. C, on Young, 149 n. 
Shelley, P. B., admires M., 42; Adonais, 
555; influence on Byron, 536; influ- 
enced by All., 474-5, by Nativity, 567, 
by P. L., 228-31; on Endymion, 201; 
sonnets of, 537. — 665 (2), 67g, 684 (2). 
Shenstone, W., blank verse of, 144, 320- 
21; influence on Jago, 249; monody on, 
68I{l^()l). — 648. 
Shepherd, R., Nuptials, 372-3; on the 

ode, ^ZS- — 647,663,672. 
Shepherd, T. R., 678. 



Sherburn, G., 421 n., 422 n., 423 n., 

426 n., 429 n., 447 n., 449 n. 
Sheridan, E.,(55o. 

Sheridan, R. B., 62g, 681 (1779, 1791). 
Sheridan, T., quotes P. L., 11 n. 
Sherive, C. H., 661, 6g6. 
Shiells, R., Marriage, 372, 643. 
Shillito, C, 6gi. 
Shipley, J., s6^n.,64i. 
Shipman, T., on P. Z., 45 n. 
Shippen, W., Moderation Displayed, 96 n. 
Shod, T., (525, (5ji. 
Sibthorp, 'R.,648. 
Siddons, S., abridges P. L., 26. 
Sidney, P., sonnets of, 478 n., 479, 480; 

unrimed lyric by, 563 n. 
Singleton, J., West-Indian Islands, 257-8, 

650. 
Singleton, R. C, Virgil, 330, 667. 
SixJ.,<555. 
Skelton, A., 6g2. 

Skene, G., Donald Bane, 301, d^g. 
Skurray, F. , 62S. 

Smart, C, Hop-Garden, ^6^-6, 374, 380 n., 
381 n., 471 n.; praises All. and Pen., 
10, 366; praises Dryden and Pope, 
10; Song to David, 366, 415 n., 419, 
420, 437, 561. — 643, 644 (3), 645, 671. 
Smart, J. S., on M.'s. sonnets, 485 n., 

487 n. 
Smedley, E., 631. 

Smith, A., on blank verse, 47, 50 n. 
Smith, C., Beachy Head, 255, 256 n.; on 
the sonnet, 484 n., 522; sonnets of, 
499 n., 502, 503-4, 515, 5170., 518, 
519-20, 523, 527 n.; sonnets of, Words- 
worth on, 535 n. — 657, 663, 68g. 
Smith, E., 52 n., 78, 681 (1751)- 
Smith, E.F.,<575. 
Smith, J., dj^. 

Smith, M., Vision, 95-6, 637. 
Smith, T.,(5p5. 
Smith, W.,<5(5(5. 
Smith, Sir W. €.,67^. 
Smollett, T. , Burlesque Ode, 552 n. — 674. 
Smyth, P.,6j8. 
Smyth, W.,678. 
Snart, C., 66^. 
SneW, -p., 648. 
Snyder, E. D., 117 n. 
Soames, W. , 632. 

Somervile, W., Chace, 46 n., 125, 249, 
361-3, 368, 374, nature in, 239-40; on 
Philips, 361; on Thomson, 38 n., 361; 
other poems by, 363. — <Jjp, 640, 
641 (2). 



7i8 



INDEX 



Sonnet, the, bipartite structure of, 486-7, 
532-4; Cowper on, 521 n.; form of, 
should follow thought, 487; general 
indifference to laws of, 524-5, 533 n.; 
poor opinion of, in i8th cent., 503, 
520-23, 525-6, 535 n.; Wordsworth 
on, 529, 532-4, 535 n. 
the 1 8th-cent., 478-528; a phase of the 
romantic movement, 526; bibliog- 
raphy of, 68^-gy; characteristics 
of, 519-28; diction of, criticized, 
66-7, 523; few printed before 1775, 
499, 525; few writteh before 1740, 
488-9, 499; in blank verse, 51 n., 
496 n.; in magazines, 499; in novels, 
499, 502 n., 504; irregular forms 
opposed, 484-5, 500, 518, 524; little 
studied, 478, 488; non-Miltonic type 
of, 502-5, 519; pensiveness of, 497- 
520, 535; Petrarchan form of, dis- 
liked, 500 n., 516, 522-3, 524; slow 
use of Shakespearean rime-scheme in, 
524; subjects treated in, 520; table 
of, 523; vogueof, 498-9, 523; vogue 
of, due to Milton's minor poems, 
526-7. 
the Elizabethan, 478-80; ignorance of 
and indifference to, in i8th cent., 
480-82; influence of, 492, 517, 538, 
540-41. See Shakespeare, Spenser, 
the Italian, influence of, 492, 493-4, 
536-7, 538, 540, 541-2; little read 
in 1 8th cent., 485, 501 n.; transla- 
tions of, 485-6, 489 n., 508 n., 537. 
Sonnets in imitation of M.'s, 489, dgd-y. 
Sophocles, translated, 346-51. 
Sophronia, 283 n., 645. 
Sotheby, W., Saul, 263 n., 304 n.; Tour 
through Wales, 263. — 630, 656, 661, 
663, 6qi. 
Southey, R., 26 n., 299, 308, 326; epics 
of, 276, 279, 287-93; fondness for 
liberty, 289-93; indifferent to M., 293, 
559 n., 565 n.; influenced by Akenside, 
292, 388 n. , 391 ; influenced by All. and 
Pen., 473 n.; Inscriptions, 292; on 
Bampfylde, 506; on Bowles, 518; on 
Brydges, 509; on Collins, 565 n.; on 
Grahame, 266 n.; on Hurdis, 262 n.; 
on RusseU, 507; on Satnor, 308; on 
W.H.Roberts, 285; sonnets of, 518-19; 
Thalaba, 565; unrimed lyrics by, 565. 
— 657, 658, 659 (3), 660, 664, 666, 
677, 683, 693. 
Spectator. See Addison, J. 
Spence, J., 17, 647, 648. 



Spenser, E., Amvretti, 478, 480, 482, 
501 n., 502, influence of, 491, 493-4, 
508 n., 517, 523-4, 532, 540; i8th- 
cent. attitude to, 20 n., 24, 39; has 
less influence in i8th cent, than M., 
435; praised, 16, 130, 187, 199, 443, 
454; rimeless sonnets of, 563 n. 
Faerie Queene, diction of, 64, 66 n., 67; 
i8th-cent. editions of, 4; in couplets 
and in blank verse, 46; influence of, 
117, 141 n., 178 n., 201, 291, 385, 
389 n., 461, 466, 508 n., 517, 538, 
540, 551, 673 (1763), 681 (1751); 
stanza not appreciated, 56, 58, 437. 

Standen, J., To Dr. Watts, 103, 637. 

Steele, A., 672. 

Steele, R., on M., 23, 422. 

Steere, R., 625 n. 

Steevens, G., 480-81, 521. 

Stephen, L., 367. 

Stephens, E., 642, 644. 

Sterling, G., sonnet of, 546. 

Sterling, J. , 654, 688. 

Stevens, W. B., 654, 675, 689. 

Stevenson, M., sonnets of, 488 n. 

Stillingfleet, B,, oratorio from P. L., 29 n.; 
sonnets of, 491. — 626, 633, 680 n., 685. 

Stockdale, M. R., 695. 

Stolberg,F.L., translated, 35 2, 661 (1800), 
•55^(1813). 

Stone, F.,647. 

Stormont, D.,(54^. 

Strahan, A., Aeneid, 328, 356, 641. 

Strange, T.,(5(5j. 

Strangford, Viscount, 696 n. 

Stratford, T., influenced by P. L., 246; 
on M., 21 n., 32 n. — 645, 654. 

Strong, E.K.,(5p4. 

Struthers, J., 679 (2). 

Strutt, J., 51 n. 

Suckling, J., 23. 

Surrey, Earl of, Aeneid, 75, 323. 

Swain, J., Redemption, 409, 656. 

Swan, C, 666. 

Swanwick, A., Aeschylus, 349-50, 668. 

Swete, J.,(5p2. 

Swift, J., admires P. L., 15; Ode- on 
Science, 450; on Hughes, 442; on 
Thomson, 142; parodied, 450-51. — 
669. 

Swift, T.,<5p(5 n. 

Swifte, E. L., Iliad, 339 n. 

Swinburne, A. C, diction of, 194-5; on 
hexameters, 326; Sapphics, 565; son- 
nets of, 546; uses Nativity meter, 568-9, 
684. 



INDEX 



719 



Sylvester, J., 479. 

Symmons, C, 696. 

Symmons, J., 648. 

Symons, A., 515 n. 

Sympson, J., Beaulies of Spring, 247, 6^4. 

Talbot, G.,62s. 

Taperell, J., 64 j. 

Taprell, R., 631. 

Tasso, T., influence of, 95 n., 356 n, 

Tate, N. , influenced by M., 421-2, 566; 
on rime, 44 n. — 632. 

Taller, 23, 34 n., 96. 

Taylor, 'i.,632 (1827), 681 {i?,ij),69i, 697. 

Taylor, W., 274 n., 347-8, 683 (2). 

Technical treatises, in blank verse, 359- 
81; defects of, 371, 379-80; paro- 
died, 380-81. 
in rime, 632-4. 
in verse in foreign languages, 360 n. 

Temple ofGnidus, 343, 649. 

Tennyson, A., 80 n., 278, 357, 555, 565; 
on blank verse, 326 n., 358; on hexa- 
meters, 326; on Lycidas, 419; on 
Wordsworth, 190; sonnets of, 545. 

Terry, M.,682. 

Thaler, A., 29 n., 430 n., 433 n. 

Thelwall, J., Fairy of the Lake, 557; Hope 
of Albion, 300-301 ; sapphics by, 565 n.; 
sonnet by, 498 n. — 628, 659, 661 (2), 
663 (3), 664, 665, 678, 681 (181 7), 682, 
690. 

Theobald, L., on M., 421, 426. 

Theofhrastus, The English, 23-4. 

Thomas, A., 630. 

Thomas, B., 672. 

Thomas, Edward, 647. 

Thomas, Edmund, 648. 

Thomas, L. (?), 682 n. 

Thomas, W., Young, 154, 155, 156 n., 
158 n., 590 w. 

Thompson, F., 194-5, 555. 

Thompson, G., translations by, 336, 344, 
661. 

Thompson, W., of Trinity College, Dub- 
lin, Job, 112, 639. 

Thompson, W., of Queen's College, Ox- 
ford, iVfl/m/y, 429 n.; on Glover, 281; 
Sickness, 158 n., 385. — 642, 649, 673, 
686. 

Thomson, A., 634, 659, 660, 692. 

Thomson, J., 20 n., 76 n., 77, 123-48, 
165, 167, 177, 236; borrowings from 
M. , 131, 425, 429, 583-90; Britannia, 
383; Castle of Indolence, 69, 124, 365; 
criticizes Augustan poetry, 129-30; 



influenced by J. Philips, 140-41; in- 
fluenced by M., 131-46, 446; influ- 
enced by Virgil, 140; Liberty, 133 n., 
146-7, 241, 383; Memory of Con- 
greve, 147 n.; on M., 19, 36-7, 131; 
poems to, 399 n., 640 (1736), 641 
(1739), 658 (1796, two); preface to 
Areopagitica, 41, 131; To Delacour, 
147 n.; To Memory of Newton, 383; 
translates Virgil, 327 n. — 625, 638 
(2), 639 (3), 640 (2), 669 (2). 
Seasons, diction of, 134-8; excellences 
of, 147-8, 149; feeling for nature in, 
124-5, 147-8; humorous picture of 
an orgy in, 140 n., 316; influence of, 
49, 125, 127-8, 149, 237, 238, 239, 
241 n.,247, 258, 259, 261 n.,264, 267, 
269-70, 273, 361, 365, 368, 390, 397, 
399 n., 664 (Bayley); Pope's and 
Lyttelton's part in, 118 n.; popu- 
larity of, 24, 26, 46, 124-8, 142 n., 
269 n., 273, 361; prosody of, 145-6; 
significance of, 123-5, 237, 273; tur- 
gidity of, 136-45. 

Thorn, R. J., 300 n., 657 (2), 660. 

Thornhill, W. J., Aeneid, 330-31, 668. 

Thou, J. A. de, 360 n. 

Thrale, Mrs. H., 505 n. 

TickeU, R.,<57(5, dp2. 

TickeU, T., edits P. L., it. — 632. 

Tighe, M.,(5p5. 

Tindal, W.,<5(5j. 

ToAristus, in Imitation o/M.,420 n., 428; 
489 n.,696 n. 

Todd, H. J., edits M., 5 n.,431 n.,491. 

Toland, J.,33, 424, 428. 

Tomlins, E. S. and T. E., 695. 

Tomlinson, C, 488. 

Tonson, J., 5. 

Topographical poems, in blank verse, 
247-58; not known to be Miltonic, 
627-31. 

Tovey, D. C, on Gray, 453 n., 459- 

Townsend, G., Armageddon, 410 n.,66s. 

Toynbee, P., 109 n.; Dante in English, 
352-6, 490 n. 

Translations, difficulties of, 324; free, 
opposed, 564; improvement in, 357-8; 
in blank verse, 104-7, 323-58; M.'s in- 
fluence on, unfortunate, 356; requisites 
of good, 324; unsatisfactory character 
of, 356-7. See also Blank verse. Hexa- 
meter, Prose, Rime. 

Trapaud, E., 651 n. 

Trapp, J., 17, 425; Virgil, 106, 637. 

Travis, G.,673. 



720 



INDEX 



Tripe, A.,6jj. 

TroUope, A. W., 63S. 

Tucker, W. J., (525. 

Turberville, G., Ovid, 342 n. 

Turnbull, G., 6j6, 6^6. 

Twining, T. , 32 n., 50. 

Twiss, H., parodies AU., 467, 679. 

Tyson, M., 648, 672, 673. 

Tytler, A. ¥.,689. 

Tytler, H. W.,(5j3 (1710). 

Upton, W. , 632, 6 go. 

Valpy, R.,(59J. 

Vanhomrigh, Miss, 673. 

Vaniere, J., Fraedlum Riisticum, 360 n., 
366, 633 (1736-54). 

Vauxhall, 28. 

Vega, Lope de, 492 n., 6§g (1797). 

Venables, G. S.,666. 

"Vicarius," Sketches of Beauty, 401, 655. 

Victor, B., 673. 

Vida, M. G., 360 n., 633 (1723, 1725, 
1736-54), (5 J.; (Jones). 

Vincent, J., Fowling, 379, 664. 

Virgil, Aencid, influence of, 91, 183, 278; 
Georgics, influence of, 140, 183, 269,360, 
366, 374; more often translated than 
Homer, 327, 334; thought no greater 
thanM., 8, 17-18, 20-22, 163, 386, 397, 
501; translations of, 104-6, 172 n., 
327-34- 

Vision, SI n.,g5, 637. 

Visitations of the Almighty, 406, 646. 

Vivian, T., translations by, 335, 6jg. 

Voltaire, 276 n., 283, 284 n., 341 n.; on 
M., 20. 

Vyse, W.,(5^7, 682. 

Wakefield, G., 573 «., 678. 

Walker, J. , 630. 

Walker, W. S., 26 n.; translations by, 

344, 350, 351- — 664, 667. 
Wall, W. E., Christ Crucified, 309, 666. 
Wallace, G., Prospects, 253, 6ji. 
Waller, W., contrasted with M., 6, 13 n. 
Walpole, H., on Batheaston, 477; on 

Johnson's Milton, 32n.; onM., i3n., 

23; on the epic, 277-8, 279; on Young, 

158-9. — 686. 
Walsh, W. , ignores Lycidas, 425; sonnet 

by, 488,489 n. 
Walters, D.,<530. 
Walters, J., 634, 67s. 
War, 399, 642 n. 
Warburton, W., 480, 494; on M., 6, 18, 21, 



22-3, 43, 426, 432; on M.'s "adorers," 
6; translates Addison, 108, 318, 638. 

Ward, ]., 628. 

Warton, John, 637. 

War ton, Joseph, 431, 441, 442; avoids 
couplets, blank verse, and long poems, 
243, 434-6; encourages Bowles, 462, 
513; Enthusiast, 243-4, 245; Essay on 
Pope, 5, 12-13, 435 n., 462; favors 
glowing style, 142; imitates M.'s trans- 
lation from Horace, 561; on M., 9n., 
22; on moralizing in verse, 435; paro- 
died, 467; says All. and Pen. neglected, 
430; uses Nativity meter, 566; verses 
to, 661 (1800), 681 (1800). — 626, 641, 
6j3, 660, 670, 678, 682, 683, 684. 

Warton, T. , Jr., 28 n., 115, 442, 680 
(1790); avoids couplets, blank verse, 
and long poems, 243, 434-6; borrowings 
from M., 114, jgj-602; diction of, 66, 
602; editor of M.'s minor poems, 5 n., 
57, 463; influenced by All. and Pot., 
463-7; love of nature, 245, 465-6, 497; 
on M., 23, 32, 43, 57, 162, 175; on the 
Spenserian stanza, 437; Cxford Ale, 
317; parodied, 467, 469; Pleasures of 
Melancholy, 244-5, 393, 464, ^74 (i774) ; 
sonnets of, 496-8; sonnets of, influence 
of, 498, 506 n., 507-8, 509 n., 512-13, 
519 n., 529; translates Horace, 561; 
unacquainted with early blank verse, 
121 n., 431 n.; uninfluenced by most 
early literature, 87-8. — 642 (2), 643, 
671 {2), 673, 680, 683, 686. 

Warton, T., Jr. (?), Five Pastoral Eclogues, 
245-6. 

Warton, T., Sr., 243, 435-6, 441; brings 
M. to Pope's attention (?), 115 n.; 
fond of the couplet, 434; influence on 
his sons, 431, 461, 498 n., 560-61; in- 
fluenced by M., 461-2, 560-61. — 626, 
642, 670, 682 (2). 

Warwick, T., 514, (555. 

Watts, I., borrows from Lycidas, 423, 425, 
550; influenced by P. L., 62, 102-4, 
124, 404; on M., 37, 38, 76, 103; on 
prosody, 57, 60, 61; poems to, 625 
(1706), 637 (1706), 643 (1750); popu- 
larity of, 403; unrimed lyric by, 564 n. 
— 625, 638. 

Way, A. S., translations by, 358. 

Webb, D., criticizes couplet, 60-61; on 
M.,ii n.,37. 

Webb, F., Somerset, 258, 664. 

Weekes, N., Barbados, 257-8, 644. 

Wells.J. E.,55jw. 



INDEX 



721 



Welsted, L., praises M., 6, 37, 38. 

Werge, J. , 1571, 680. 

Wesley, J., edits P. Z., 34-5; praises M., 7. 

Wesley, S., Jr., parodies Miltonic descrip- 
tive poetry, 272 n., 640. 

Wesley, S., Sr., Hymn on Peace, 109 n., 
429 n.; on blank verse, 45 n.; praises 
P. L.,38. 

West, G., 556, 681. 

West, J., (5pj. 

West, R., favors close translation, 564; 
Gray on, 69, 490; influenced by All., 
431 n. , 453; Monody on Queen Caroline, 
550-51. — 66g, 6yo, 680. 

Westby, S.,6fo. 

Weston, J., 656, 6go, 6g6. 

Weston, S., 6g2, 6g6. 

Whalley, T. S.,<5jo. 

Whateley, M., d^p, 6g^. 

WTiatel}', E.,on Wordsworth, 182, 190 n., 
196 n. 

Whiffen, E.T., 558-9. 

Whigs, M. admired by, 40-42. 

"Whistlecraft." See Frere, J. H. 

White, H., on the sonnet, 482 n., 484 n. 

White, H. Kirke, 472, djz, 661, 662, 678 
(2), 683, 6g6. 

White, T.H., 31. 

Whitehead, W. , Hymn, 392; on rime, 
44; parodies Young, 159 n. — 644, 652, 

675- 

Whitehouse, J., translates Stolberg, 352. 
— 655, 661, 676, 6S3, 6go. 

Whitelaw, R., Sophocles, 349, 668. 

Whitfield, H.,(5<5j. 

Whitman, W., Leaves of Grass, 122, 128. 

Wigglesworth, M., Day of Doom, 403. 

Wilcocke, S., Britannia, 302, 659. 

Wilde, O. , sonnets of, 545-6. 

Wilkie, W. , Epigoniad, 278 n. 

Wilks, Rev. Mr.,(5^3. 

Williams, E., dgj. 

Williams, H. M., sonnets of, 499, 514, 
535 n., (555. 

Williams, J., 656. 

Williams, T. C, Virgil, ZZZ, 334- 

Williams, W., of Gray's Inn, Redemption, 
4ion.,<55p. 

Williams, W., of Halifax, 62g, 647 n. 

Wills, J., Art of Painting, 343, 644. 

Wilson, J., of Lanarkshire, 629. 

Wilson, "Professor," 266 n., 337. 

Winchilsea, Countess of, Nocturnal Rev- 
erie, 124; parodies M., 15 n., 108, 638. 

Wingfield, R.,d2(5. 

Winstanley, J., 626, 641. 



Wisdom, 406 n., 643. 

Wither, G., Shepherd's Hunting, 442, 

\\^itt, E. E., Odyssey, 339, 668. 

WodhuU, M., Euripides, 348-9, 634. 

Wogan, C., 640. 

Wolcot, J., 686. 

Wollaston, W., on rime, 52. 

Woodford, S.,on blank verse, 45 n., 55 n.; 
on P. Z,., 12 n.; sonnets of, 489 n. 

Woodhouse, J., 62g, 630. 

Woodhouslee, Lord. See Tytler, A. F. 

Woodley, G.,628, 631. 

Wordsworth, W., 80 n., 166, 177-200,384, 
388-90, 400 n., 503, 667 (1851); ad- 
mires Bowles, 511 n., 535 n.; "A little 
onward lend," 189; Arte gal and Elidure, 
184; borrowings from M., 183-4, 607- 
20; borrows from Cottle, 254; borrows 
from Russell, 507; borrows from Symp- 
son, 247; change in descriptive poetry 
of, 271-2; Convention of Cintra, 180, 
184; Cumberland Beggar, 194; debt to 
his predecessors, 186-7, i97) 236; 
Descriptive Sketches, 236, 272; diction 
of, 193-9, 618-20; early blank verse of, 
affected by his theories, 186 n.; Excur- 
sion, 185-98; Home at Grasmere, 185-6, 
192 n., 193 n., 196 n.; ideas on diction 
discussed, 298-9; Kilchurn Castle, 185, 
192 n.; not first to make English lakes 
known, 273 n.; Ode to Duty, 441; on 
Brydges, 509; on Gary's Dante, 354; 
on Crowe, 253; on Dyer, 186 n., 367, 
372; on M., 179-83, 187, 198, 431 n.; 
on M.'s sonnets, 482, 529, 532-3; on 
Shakespeare's sonnets, 534 n.; on the 
sonnet, 522, 525, 535 n.; on Thomson, 
124 n., 128, 186 n.; Prelude, 180, 186- 
98; Recluse, 186, 193 n.; significance 
of, in development of descriptive poetry 
273-5; sonnets of, 179-80, 528-36; 
sonnets of, influence of, 535-6, 537, 542, 
543, 545 ri-! sonnet, London, 1802, 179- 
80; stilted conversation of, 190, 196 n.; 
To Enterprise, 473-4; translations by, 
357; wherein like M., 178-9; Yew- 
Trees, 173, 185, ig2-n. — 637 n., 658, 
660, 661 (2), 662, 665 (5), 666 (2), 667, 
67 g, 685 n., 68g, 6g7. 

World, The, 505. 

Woty, W., burlesque poetry by, 316-17, 
318-19, 471 n.; translates Gessner, 352. 
— 632, 646 (3), 647 (2), 648, 64g, 651, 
671, 672, 674, 682. 

Wrangham, F., 658, 661, 663, 6g2. 

Wray, D., 494. 



722 



INDEX 



Wright, I. C, Iliad, 337-8, 668. 
Wyatt,T., 47811. 

Xenophon, adapted, 261 n., 345-6. 

Yearsley, A., 359; admires P. L.,g n., 24; 
Inhumanity of Slave-Trade, 26811.; 
knows little poetry, 24-5. — 62^, 65s 
{2), 676, 693. 

Yeatman, H. F. , 628. 

Yorke, C, sonnets of, 490, 494, 68^, 6g6. 

Yorke, P. , second earl of Hardwicke, son- 
net of, 489-90, 494, 685. 

Yorke, P., Viscount Royston, Cassandra, 
345, 663. 

Youde, J., Telemachus, 341, 6^2. 

Young, E., 18-19, 149-60; borrowings 
from M., 151 n., $90-94; Conjec- 
tures on Original Composition, 52, 



150 n., 151 n., 159-60; on blank 
verse, 49, 52, 150; on imitation, 159- 
60; personal character of, 149-50; 
prose of, put into blank verse, 46 n. , 
112 n.; rimed work of, 150. — 641, 
642. 
Night Thoughts, 20 n., 24, 25, 26, 125, 
128, 166, 368, 382, 398-9, 402; and 
"graveyard poetry," 472; aphoristic 
style of, 157-8; defects of, 149-50; 
diction of, 154-7; influence of, 158, 
159 and n., 242, 247, 261, 408, 410; 
parodied, 159 n.; popularity of, 46, 
158-9; prosody of, 157; punctuation 
of, 151 n., 157. 

Young,M.J.,<5pj. 

Young, W., 657. 

Zouch, T., 648, 649, 650. 



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